The life and work of Ele D'Artagnan (1911-1987)

Ele D'artagnan, born in Venice, was an orphan who had a singular life on the margins of the Italian Dolce vita. During the late 1930s he was a trumpet player in the military band that played for Mussolini and the King.  During the war years, he worked in vaudeville troupes, mostly in Milan and the north of Italy.  By 1950 he moved to Rome, living a precarious existence but able to enter into the thriving film business in Cinecittà. From the early '50s to the early '70s, he acted in many Italian films, including Fellini's Toby Dammit, City of Women, Casanova and Amarcord (where he appears in the final scene, the old man under an umbrella on the beach, looking out to sea).  Between films, he lived on the streets or in a squatter's shack on the Tiber banks, and he passed the time painting, often using pieces of cardboard found on the street and a box of crayons that a schoolkid had given him. Without formal training, D'Artagnan was nonetheless blessed with an ebullient imagination, and he was able to develop a coherent and original style, combining elements of naif and psychedelia, where the bright colors and dreamlike symbolism seem to perfectly capture the spirit of the euphoric Roman dolce vita.

Death and an Extraordinary Rebirth

D'Artagnan's paintings give birth to ICBIE, a school for the poor in Brazil

D'Artagnan died, forgotten and wretched, in 1987, and his paintings were bequeathed to a young Italian musician and critic, Pietro Gallina, who had been the painter's closest friend since the early '50s, when Pietro was a little boy. Pietro worked slowly and persistently to create a posthumous fame for D'Artagnan, culminating in the successful showing in New York in 2003. With the proceeds of the show, Pietro bought a beautiful old building on the seafront in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, and founded the

where D'Artagnan's dreams of a home, a community and harmony can be realized, helping the desperate children of the favelas. A D'Artagnan painting has been added to the permanent display at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and subsequent showings in Miami, Amsterdam and New York have permitted the ICBIE to grow and expand.

On the Margins of the Dolce Vita

Ele D'Artagnan biography by Pietro Gallina