Gigi Chessa

Gigi Chessa grew up among painters. His father Carlo was an etcher and painter, his mother Luisa Carelli painted too, and he spent his early childhood in Paris before the family settled in Turin in 1909. He trained at the city's Albertina academy and then in the studio of Felice Casorati, the painter at the centre of modern art in Turin.

He never kept to the easel. In 1925 the industrialist and collector Riccardo Gualino had him refit an old Turin theatre, down to the design of its seats, and he drew sets and costumes for opera and ballet. For the Lenci firm he designed furniture, rugs and ceramics. He made advertisements for a chocolate maker, dressed shop windows, furnished a pharmacy in a spare modern style, and from 1927 taught stage design at Turin's school of architecture.

He was ill for years, and his output only seemed to quicken. Chessa died in Turin in April 1935, at 36, and a retrospective that same year was introduced by his friend from the Casorati circle, the painter Carlo Levi.