The historic Studio Bolzani Gallery in Milan with its hundred years and plus) of activities (celebrated in 2022) and very active on the side of modern and contemporary art, offers us the initiative for 2025 of “The picture of the month”. So in its windows in the Strasbourg gallery close to Piazza San Babila we will find every month a painting of exceptional value and a
Clear fame artist. For March 2025 it is the turn of a rare and valuable sheet of graphics by Luigi Conconi (Milan 1852 – Milan 1917), A artist of a strong Name belonging to the scapigliata Milanese school, and Bolzani have always been interested in numerous painters with paintings, drawings and graphics of this regional school that has conquered the Italian and European world.
The work on display Bolzani in this March 2025 has a double title “Flower infantrymen” and “sword”, as it reproduced on the Folium, the first top vertically, the second at the bottom horizontally; The “sword” subject is to be considered born as a possible idea for his business card. The sheet in my opinion, despite the colleague Anna Maria Brizio the data 1884, with more precision must instead be dated no earlier than 1885, precisely because printed in the study of via San Paolo 10 in Milan, given that the Conconi here was established in 1885. Here are the precise data. Object press; Author Conconi, Luigi (engraver); Title (Flower infantry); Dating 1885; Matter and technique Ocquforce, monotype for both; Measures paper sheet cm. 62 × 47(Flower infantryman 197x123mm – Sword 55 × 108 mm); Note on the image Single state specimen. Historic-Critic news Excellent impression printed with a strong and brilliant sign on paper. Great margins, great preser
vation. Bibliography A. Mezzetti, Lombard etching in the second half of the 19th centuryMilan 1935; Complete descriptive card in M. Bianchi, G. Ginex, Luigi Conconi engraverexhibition catalog, Federico Morra Editore Milan 1994.
Among the artistic personalities of the second eight hundred also stands out that of Luigi Conconi (1852-1917), a multifaceted exponent of the second generation of the Scapigliati but also the only artist who translated with the incisory techniques, in an era in which these were a very little-practiced expressive means in Italy, the vaporosity of the brush stroke and the blur or unravel of the shape that characterized painting scapigliata. Luigi Conconi must be remembered both for the skill and for the technical and expressive innovations introduced in the incision of the water, such as to be fully inserted among the most important Italian engravers.
Much of his production of engraved sheets was given by Conconi to the friend writer Carlo Pisani Dossi, with whom he shared the taste for the Gothic novel and for the macabre, as well as the passion for oddities and curiosities (stuffed animals, archaeological finds, Mirabilia). Each of the two had 
collected and collected in a kind of Wunderkammer Ottimocentque among the most varied and strange objects, now the Dossi collection is still existing in its noble home in Corbetta; Of that of Conconi, however, collected in its extravagant atelier studio in the Palazzo Spinola in via San Paolo, we can only get an idea by reading the article by Martinelli and looking at the photos taken by Emilio Sommariva in 1918 (from the site http: //www.lombardiabenicultural). So Martinelli: “From the ceiling, dusty and dry dead bins hang; on the walls, on the jambs of the doors, the mummies of cats and stinking stinking on the roofs are fearful and grinning; along the walls, on tables of lizards, rumor, sober, frogs, together with funeral skulls, chives, widespread and in the corners. Strange Ghiribizzi that mania of manifold was able to accumulate in the research of the Etruscan tombs and in prehistoric excavations … a watch with the dial painted with skulls and with the weights in the foggia of the dead bone and of bat mummy was then reproduced in one of its etchings “.
Conconi cultivated the incisor activity in parallel with the pictorial one, themes and subjects dear to painting scapigliata, Like the portraits, male and female, concerning their restricted circle of friendships, are made in ways that they are not only descriptive but respond to an still romantic emotional intent and with a strong, touching psychological charge. The pictorial touch comes
Translated to the waterfall in evanescent signs, the soft blur of the contours is also rendered through a particular inks of the slab.
And we come to the graphic technique. This is what is technically called the Monotype: The slab is partially engraved with aquamentan, but the shaded or clear-scruce effects are made with the ink directly on the slab. As the term indicates, from monotype It is possible to obtain only a printed specimen, because the ink applied on the surface of the slab is immediately absorbed by the sheet during printing. For concurs, therefore, the engraving on copper with the bunings was often only a base to be completed then pictorially in the inking phase. As Liliana Menta explains (in Luigi Conconi engraver, published by Federico Motta, 1994): “During the inking phase of the matrix spread the ink on the slab as if the one were the pigment and the other the canvas. From a certain moment of his career, since 1878 according to Luca Beltrami, he has merged the pictorial and graphic discipline. Because the image was clearly readable, it was necessary that, for each edition, the signs engraved on the plate were completed with the monotype inking. When the only tools did not guarantee the sought -after effect, it intervened directly with the fingers, as the fingerprints visible on some specimens detect “. The signature on many of its monotypes – beautiful and unmistakable – is not engraved, but made by removing fresh ink. Precisely because of the importance of the concrete, Conconi personally performed the press of his branches: in the study of via San Paolo he had the great and ancient press left by the artistic family, of which he had been a member since 1881, when he had actively participated in the “Artistic indisposition”, A sort of Burlesca and irreverent response to the very efficient person Milanese National Exhibition of the same year.
Rare work and of exceptional graphic and collecting value, I consider among the most beautiful and significant of Conconi also for the fact that in the Folium there are two images, which is rather rare (I remember another folium with two images that has a Cinderella title). Particular subject, refers to the medieval image.
“Luigi Concons (Milan, 1852 – 1917 And Conconi), who approach it to the style of their “school”. of the viewer on the face of the portrait subject (Guys in the garden1879). A simple combination between some portraits of Conconi (Portrait of Mrs. Torelli, Portrait of Ada Valdataor Portrait of Primo Levi) and works by Quiet Cremona (The two cousins), or between landscapes of ours (Villa in the garden) and views of Ranzoni (Ascona seen from the islands of Saint-Léger), can you demonstrate
they are satisfactorily the artistic debt of Conconi towards these teachers.
Despite the important role played in Italian painting between the second nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (some painting competitions won, including the Broggi Prize, in 1881, and gold medals in Paris, in 1900, and Monaco, in 1913), Luigi Conconi cannot be remembered only for awards received in this artistic sector: in fact it is also an architect, illustrator and engraver. In the first field, it is reported for the construction of Villa Dossi in Como and for the facade of Palazzo Turati in Milan, as well as for the projects (never made) for the arrangement of the Bonaparte Forum in Milan and for the monument to Vittorio Emanuele in Rome. As an illustrator of distinguishing for the satirical cartoons designed for the “Guerin Meschino”, a newspaper founded in 1882 by Conconi himself in collaboration with Dossi, Borghi and Beltrami, while a few years later he collaborates with the magazine “Reformation”, which allows him to refrain as a graphic designer and political illustrator. As regards the engraving activity, already in 1877 it was present at the Paris Motor Show with a waterfall reproducing a view of the courtyard of Palazzo Marino; Among the other known engravings, it is remembered The house of the magicianperformed around 1880, while in 1916 he received a particular recognition of the London exhibition of the association of Italian engravers and etchings.
Considerable importance, for the understanding of the man-concrete, occupies the study of via San Paolo 10 in Milan: moved to this building around 1885 (after having shared another study with Gaetano Previati, from which however he did not remain stylistically fascinated), with the passing of the years the artist transforms him into a real museum of scapigliatura. “In these rooms, Conconi had collected everything the whimsical and bizarre taste of the time could hit his imagination, which at the time adapted without laying. In the Scapigliati, there was a somewhat ironic pleasure a little convinced of the macabre, horrid, melancholy grotesque, a pleasure that strangely accompanied the good -naturedness of the character and to certain impetuses of joy that seemed like the salt of the faithful and numerous friendships (…). The sense of death and destruction is everywhere “(GB Angeletti). And precisely this sense of the macabre and the mysterious, rendered through dark tones and tetri, echoes in some of his works performed by the late nineteenth century (Variations on midnight1909), sometimes alternating with brighter and less oppressive visions. In 1896 he acquired a part of the cloister of Voltorre (in the province of Varese), which it adjusts at home and studying; The following year he takes Eugenia from Co, with whom he spends in the Varese locality, on the banks of Lake Gavirate, the hot season. Politically active, between 1899 and 1904 he is a member of the City Council of Milan, a task he always faces accompanied by his satirical verve, which he will never abandon even by spending the years: in 1913, in fact, after the superintendency prevents him from the restoration of his cloister, who collapsed following a fire, Conconi gives life to the ironic incision To the merits for the conservation of the cloister of Voltorre. He died in Milan in 1917, following a long illness ” (Mirko Moizi – Art historian- University of Italian Switzerland).
Carlo Franza