Franco Rognoni was born in Milan in 1913 into a lower middle class family that found itself in economic difficulty. Attend the Higher School of Art of the Sforzesco Castle in Milan. His artistic training, almost entirely self-taught, led him to love artists such as Modigliani, Picasso, Chagall e Klee. In the art critic's library Raffaello Giolli he studies foreign artists who excite him more than those of the Italian tradition. The businessman Giovanni Botta, passionate about drawings, commissioned him to do an impressive illustrative work of some of the main masterpieces of European literature (The Betrothed, the Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, Les Misérables).
An independent artist, Rognoni takes a solitary path away from the seduction of the new avant-gardes by developing a personal language. He lives in a conflictual situation: despite participating in political and social movements, due to a pessimistic vision, he believes the function of art and painting is exhausted. He consequently falls into an existential crisis which he overcomes by dedicating himself to illustration for publishing and drawing of political commitment and customs. Collaborations with theater and publishing help him escape from existential and artistic solitude. His dark and tormented painting becomes less obsessive and with freer forms. After over sixty years of artistic life, he died in Milan in 1999.
