Artist Biography
Edoardo Perrone di San Martino – known as Samartino – was born in Perosa Canavese (province of Turin) on October 16, 1901. He began painting at the age of 15, studying under the painter Mario Reviglione and later, when he moved to Florence, under Professor Augusto Bastianini.
In the early 1920s, he traveled to Paris to attend the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Académie Ranson, where he met Joseph Raynfeld, with whom he formed a deep friendship. They spent long periods abroad together, including in San Gimignano.
In the following decade, he settled in Paris, in the Montmartre district, where he rented a studio near the one once occupied by the famous “père Tanguy,” a friend of Cézanne and Van Gogh. During a moment of despair, he nearly destroyed his entire body of work by setting it on fire.
During World War II, he moved to Pecetto Torinese, leaving almost all of his paintings in the care of a friend in Paris, but he never recovered them after returning.
About a year later, he went to Florence and San Gimignano, where he lived until returning to Paris in 1945.
Between the late 1940s and the 1950s, he exhibited in numerous galleries in Paris, including the Galleria Visconti and the Galleria Roux Hentschel, where he won the Critic’s Award for the best exhibition of the year.
In the following years, his works were exhibited in New York, where he stayed for extended periods and exhibited particularly at the Galleria del Braux in 1953, and later in 1965 at the Galleria Stooshnoff.
Starting in the 1960s, he chose to move to Switzerland, and after several relocations between Zurich, Bern, Will, Fribourg, and a three-year stay on the French Riviera, he decided to settle in Basel, where he continued to paint until his death on July 17, 1992.
