Giovanni Bragolin Crying Boy artist - Biography - Google Gallery - Price Guide

Bruno Amadio/Giovanni Bragolin: The Crying Boy Artist – Biography – Prices on Ebay – Art Gallery

Bruno Amadio (1911-1981), better known as Giovanni Bragolin and also known as Franchot Seville, was an academically trained artist working in Venice post WWII and selling his paintings to tourists. He became particularly known for his “Crying Boy” paintings. He produced at least 65 of these paintings, signed under the name Bragolin. His fame spread worldwide when some of these were marketed as prints, ensuring him his place as one of the best known kitsch artists of the late 20th Century. But there is a darker side to the Crying Boy or Weeping Boy. Around 1985, the SUN newspaper ran a story that after a series of house fires, firemen reported that the only item remaining uncharred was the Crying Boy picture. The SUN even organised mass burnings of the print. Thus the rumour was born that there was a curse on the picture, bringing bad luck to any household where it was hung on the wall. Another rumour, doubtless equally untrue, was that the artist got his subjects to cry by telling them creepy stories or taking away their sweets.

Prints of the Crying Boy have sold over a million copies worldwide since the 1950s and made the artist a rich man. He subsequently moved from Venice to Padua. He died in 1981. It is said he never did complete his artistic training at the Academia in Venice.

Nowadays prints of the Crying Boy can be picked up on Ebay for no more than about £5-20. Perhaps collectors are reluctant to invoke the curse of the Crying Boy.

Artismus247

February 2021

Giovanni Bragolin Gallery of paintings on Google