Bruno Amadio is a 20th century Venetian painter better known as Giovanni Bragolin. Bruno was born on January 15, 1911 and became interested in painting from an early age. Despite the fact that the artist lived and worked literally in the last century, little is known about his personality.
The beginning of creativity
It is known that Amadio was born in Venice, studied at the drawing academy, but never graduated from it. Later he joined the classicists, while continuing to paint, adhering to an individual vision of life in his work.
Bruno had a wife and children, but it is impossible to find any details about his family.
Bragolin died in Padua on September 22, 1981, at the age of 71. The official cause of death is esophageal cancer, although many researchers of his work still argue on this score.
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Popular versions of painting "Crying Boy"
During his life, Bragolin painted pictures on various subjects: life events, historical subjects, flower arrangements. But his fame was brought by a series of portraits, consisting of 65 paintings.
All of these creations depict crying children. Critics noted that the artist managed to very realistically convey the genuine melancholy, despair and pain that froze in the eyes of children, full of tears.
Despite the fact that looking at the faces of crying children is not at all easy, the artist's works were very popular. Copies of the works were bought up in large quantities, and people were happy to decorate their homes with them. Giovanni sold the originals to tourists.
There are several versions of the creation of this picture.
One of the most popular legends says that the portrait depicts the artist's own son. The boy was very afraid of fire and the father, in order to achieve believability and convey true emotions of fear while working on the portrait, lit candles and burned matches right in front of the child's face.
In moments of despair, the child wished his tormentor father to burn. That is why a version appeared that the artist did not die of cancer, but during a fire in his workshop, looking at the portrait of his child. At the same time, the reproduction after the fire did not suffer in any way. There is no official data that would confirm the death of the artist in a fire.
According to another version, the famous canvas depicts a child from an orphanage. In general, the whole series of portraits of crying children was copied from orphans. Unhappy and disadvantaged, they were very believable in pictures.
There is one more suggestion how a series of paintings appeared, and in particular "Crying Boy". During the Second World War.
During the war years, many children were subjected to bullying by the fascists, to whom the artist referred to himself. That is why this version also has the right to exist.
When did the legend of the curse of the painting appear?
Rumors that the painting was cursed began to appear in 1985. It was in this year that mystical events began to occur in England. By an inexplicable coincidence, houses in the northern part of the country start to burn down one after another. People die in the fires, and by a miracle the surviving residents say that in all burnt houses there were reproductions of the artist from the famous series.
Such a statement was made by one of the firefighters and immediately after that a huge number of letters came to the publishers of all English newspapers. People argued that as soon as one of them or their acquaintances acquired a reproduction of Giovanni, unfortunate events began to occur in life: death, illness, fire.
There were so many stories that they were spread throughout the country, embellishing and adding different details. The incredible stories connected with the painting "Crying Boy" began to spread actively. As a result of mass hysteria caused by the reaction of society to the mystical events occurring with the paintings, the newspapers decided to publish a statement calling for the destruction of the damned paintings.
The controversy about the paintings of the mysterious artist still continues. Someone considers this to be a fiction and a coincidence of circumstances, others are sure that nothing is born from scratch. But no matter how many opinions exist, everyone agrees on one thing: Bragolin's paintings are as beautiful and unusual as they are mysterious and sad.
Zhanna Lyubarskaya
