Bruno Croatto is an Italian painter who belongs to the magical realism movement. He was born in Trieste, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He perfected his studies at the Munich Academy, where he received, on the one hand, the stimuli of the stylistic movement of the Secession, Max Liebermann and Franz von Stuck; on the other hand, the classicism of Anselm Feuerbach, through which he introjects the lessons of the Italian and Flemish masters of the fifteenth century.

After his debut in Trieste in 1897, he participates in the Venice Biennale, where he will be a permanent presence from 1912 to 1924. Among the first known works is “Portrait of a Sleeping Mother”, a pastel reflecting a lesson in chewing. Around 1908 he moved to Orvieto, where he became friends with Umberto Prencipe and specialized in etching and aquatint, then traveled around Italy and mainly made drawings and engravings, including numerous views of Rome, Venice and Trieste.

At the outbreak of the First World War, in order not to serve Austria, he was hospitalized in an asylum. In the first post-war period, he approaches the magical realism theorized by Massimo Bontempelli. The technical mastery and love of detail obtained through the art of engraving and the profound study of the ancient masters converge in a pictorial figure that freezes the realistic image in an alienated and dreamlike dimension: as did artists of the same years, such as Antonio Donghi, Felice Casorati and Cagnaccio di San Pietro. All this is in tune with the return to classical sobriety theorized by the magazine “Valori Plastici”.

The works of the early twenties are mainly still lifes and portraits, the protagonist and inspiration of which is his wife Esther Igea Finzi, married in 1919. Probably, it was thanks to such high-ranking connections that the painter would later manage to steal his wife, a Jew from Trieste, from the harmful effects of the racial laws. In 1925 he moved to Rome, where he would live until the end of his days. Although he integrated into the Roman environment and did not formally adhere to a specific movement, his works retain a certain affinity with the works of other Triestine artists imbued with Central European culture, who turned to the New Objectivity and the twentieth century: for example, Piero Marussig, Carlo Sbisa, Cesare Sofianopulo, Mario Lann, Oscar Hermann Lamb. His works become known abroad, and in 1929 his first solo exhibition in Paris successfully opens, where he is now presented as a “Roman artist”.

Success followed him until his death on September 6, 1948.

His works are kept in various international collections and museums: among them in Italy the Revoltella Civic Museum in Trieste, the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome and the Gallery of Modern Art in Milan.