Franco Rognoni was born in Milan 20th September 1913, son of Giuseppe andGiuseppina Carabelli in a middle class family. As a boy, he was interested in drawing and painting and, in his teens, he attended technical schools for weaving and then the Scuola superiore d'Arte handicrafts, at the Castello Sforzesco; the critic Raffaello Giolli is his first supporter, an important cultural reference point who enabled Rognoni to open seek new cultural horizons.
Since 1934 he has collaborated as designer on important magazines and dailies while in 1938 he exhibited for the first time. His training has been influenced by artists like Sironi, de Pisis, Modiglioni while his passion for books brings him near to graphic and pictorial solutions of German Expressionism.
Immagini tratte dalla personale Le carte del Mago
Luino, on Lago Maggiore, welcomes him during the war and here he concentrates on his production which is enriched with engravings , illustrations, so maintaining an important collaboration with many periodicals and foundamental contacts with publishers and collectors. In the period immediately after the war he returns to Milan and in 1946 he marries Mariuccia Noe, with whom he will share for all his life important cultural interests. In the studio at Lambrate are born new designs and pictures which already demonstrate the foundamental thematics of the artist. In particular, he developes a highly personal anti-academic language.
Guido Ballo presents him at Milan in 1953, in a personal exhibition which arouses new interests
amlong critics.. Four years later, the RAI proposes to him a project of scenographer-costume designer and the same activity is carried out for the Piccola Scala and La Fenice of Venice. Both public and critics appreciate the originality of his interpretation of theatre spaces, aspects which flow into his painting through the use of a mixture of decoration, illustration , graphics and scenography.
Effects which are reflected also in a mixture of irony and drama, with a taste which we may legitimately call muscial. Also the friendshps of the artist embrace especially literary and musicam ambits: Riccardo Malipiero, Vittorio Sereni,Piero Chiara, Dante Isella. The fifties are distinquished by the exclusive link with the Galleria dell'Annnunciata di Milano and exhibitions organised all over Europe. The following decade sees him committed in numerous exhibitions and in publishing while four great canvasses are dedicated to Ulysses executed for the turbina Michelangelo.
Between the seventies and eighties his attention shifts to the human figure, seen with critical and sceptical connotations, and the city, represented as a more and more alienating context. Besides this conotation a dreaming aspect emerges, linked to memory.
The lake, another place privileged by his representation and his existence which alternates between Milan and Luino, exalts this pictorial dimension which gazes at protagonists suspended between reality and imagination. The last decade, the nineties, sees the artist committed to representing vitality. Ample space is therefore dedicated to tone, in a pictorial direction which becomes more and more middle-European, in the sign of Symbolism and Expressionism; The artist dies at Milan 11 th March 1999.
In 2007 the art Gallery La torre hosted the solo Exhibition Le carte del mago (The card of the magician)
