Italo Mus Biography
Joseph-Italo Mus (Châtillon, 4 April 1892 – Saint-Vincent, 15 May 1967) was an Italian painter. He was born in Châtillon, in the village of Chaméran, to Eugène Mus, a sculptor originally from Torgnon, and Martine Vallaise, descendant of a noble family from Arnad. The young man's artistic training began in the workshop of his father, a wood craftsman. In 1932 Mus created the Monument to the Fallen of the First World War in Saint Vincent. The work, modeled in clay then cast in bronze in Milan, depicted an Alpino with a rifle in his hand holding a dead comrade on his knees. No trace remains of the monument because it was destroyed in the 1940s before the Second World War for the collection of metal. In 1938 art critic Guido Marangoni saw Mus's works in his studio and was so impressed that he wrote an article in the art magazine Perseo, defining Mus as a "very talented painter". In that period Mus met the most valid artists of his generation such as Carlo Carrà, Antonio Ligabue, Pietro Morando and Francesco Menzio. For a period he collaborated in his studio in Saint-Vincent with De Pisis and in 1956 some of his paintings were exhibited in New York and Buenos Aires. In the mid-sixties, while he was still in full swing, he was struck by a serious illness that no longer allowed him to work and on 15 May 1967 he died in Saint-Vincent.
