Ernesto Bergagna

Painter and teacher of the Beato Angelico School, Ernesto Bergagna was born in Bressa di Campoformido on 13 June 1902.

While still a child, he immediately revealed his marked propensity for art, especially drawing and painting, first becoming a pupil of the painter Leonardo Rigo, his first teacher, and then, having moved to Pordenone, of Tiburzio Donadon. In 1922 Brother Bergagna arrived in Milan, just at the time when Mons. Giuseppe Polvara was starting his newly founded School. These were years of intense artistic activity, both nationally and internationally, but also of a long illness, until in 1936 Mons. Polvara summoned him offering him to teach painting in the art school and later in the High school Beato Angelico.

Artist unknown to the great critics, extraneous to public assignments and the temptation of galleries, Brother Bergagna lives art in a profoundly spiritual dimension, a prayer in color, in perfect balance and harmony. After a life dedicated to art and the Church, with works scattered throughout northern Italy, between Veneto, Lombardy and Piedmont, he died in 1991, at the School.