NOMELLINI, Plinio

Italian painter. After studying in Livorno, he received a local grant that enabled him to enrol at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, where he studied under Giovanni Fattori and became friends with the painters Telemaco Signorini and Silvestro Lega. He exhibited works both in Florence and, in 1889, at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Around 1890 he moved to Genoa, where he was based until 1902. He developed a marked interest in radical politics, in 1894 being charged with anarchism and imprisoned for several months. Nomellini’s house in Genoa became a meeting place for artists and writers and his painting had an important influence on turn-of-the-century Ligurian Divisionists.

In 1902 Nomellini moved to Torre del Lago, remaining in the coastal region of north-west Italy until 1919. He became a close friend of the composer Giacomo Puccini; his reading of the works of Gabriele D’Annunzio and his friendship, from 1903, with the poet Giovanni Pascoli subsequently helped to steer his fervent political idealism towards an increasingly nationalistic position. In 1919 Nomellini finally settled in Florence, although he continued to make frequent visits to Versilia, the coastline around Livorno and the island of Elba, where he set up a studio and focused on landscape painting in the following decade.