Leonardo Cremonini was born in Bologna, Italy in 1926. His father was a locomotive engineer who sketched constantly between station stops and later spent days off painting with his son. Leonardo had four years of formal art training in Milan; he won a French government scholarship to study in Paris.

The main element of Cremonini's painting is force. Among his early subjects were slaughterhouse canvases. Later came fishermen and bathers of Ischia and rock-hard women. He worked on as many as twenty canvases at once, explaining that "they are all slowly maturing." He limits himself to simple shapes, smooth textures and cold colors, expressing little besides pity and terror.

Written and submitted by Jean Er...