Attilio Nani Biography
Son of Abramo and Margherita Legrenzi, whose father was a craftsman descending from a family of chisellers, who ran a shop in Clusone near the church of Sant'Anna, he learned the trade of chiseller and gilder. In the years from 1915-1918 he attended the Tadini Academy of Lovere, and then at the Carrara Academy as a pupil of Ponziano Loverini[1], but due to an injury to his father he left school to help in the family workshop, then moving it to Bergamo in via Torretta[2]. Continuing his father's work, he began to compose decorative motifs on plates and vases presented at the Monza Biennial decorative art exhibitions of 1923 and 1925, and then at the Milan Triennials of 1930, 1933 and 1936. At the repousse and chisel competitions in Brera he obtained two prizes during the period from 1930 to 1940. In addition to the repousse activity, from plates to vases, from portraits in the round, figures, bas-reliefs, compositions, masks and works of sacred art such as monstrances, chalices and crosses, he dedicated himself to sculpture, executing several works both in terracotta and in bronze and wax. He participated in the second and third Roman Quadrennial of 1935 and 1939, and at the twentieth Venice Biennale of 1951. He moved to Bergamo in 1927 where he died on 13 October 1959. In 1981, his widow Teresa Guerinoni donated the Angelo Mai Civic Library to the fund which was subsequently increased by his children in 1997. The drawings that make up the fund are divided into self-portraits, engravings and various subjects. In 2012 and 2014, thanks to the Luigi and Sandro Angelini scholarship, the complete catalog of the collection was drawn up by Valentina Raimondo
