Short biography
Ennio Toniolo was born in 1935 in Sesto San Giovanni (Province of Milan, Italy). He currently lives and works in his studio in Giubiasco (Ticino, Switzerland). Retired, father of three children, he taught drawing at the public school of the Canton of Ticino for thirty years.
He first studied at the University of Applied Sciences in Engineering and Architecture of Fribourg and then, in 1959, he graduated in decoration at the High School of Applied Arts in Vevey (CEPV), obtaining the best result of his course.
His artistic formation has been enriched by important encounters with great artists of the 20th century: André Jordan and Gérald Goy (during his stays in Paris with moments of bohemian life and reflection on the work of the great masters of Impressionism and Cubism), Jean Tinguely, Edmondo Dobrzanski (who personally encouraged Toniolo to pursue is artistic career as a painter) and especially with the artist and gallery owner Guido Bagutti: an encounter from which a deep friendship was born, fruitful and "difficult" on the same time, between two very different temperaments (while Bagutti was an extrovert, an enthusiast and an optimist, Toniolo was and is an introvert and a pessimist).
The encounter with the renowned art book publisher Igino Cerastico was also significant for Toniolo's artistic career. Starting from 1977, Toniolo established a professional collaboration and a friendship with Cerastico, which ended only with the premature death of the publisher in 1979, leaving unpublished two projects already completed and accepted by Cerastico: a book of drawings and a collection of Rilke's poems with linocuts.