Giovanni Bragolin
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Bruno Amadio (1911-1981), popularly known as Bragolin, and also known as Franchot Seville, Angelo (Giovanni) Bragolin, and J. Bragolin (if you read the signature on his paintings wrong), was the creator of the group of paintings known as Crying Boys. The paintings feature a variety of tearful children looking morosely straight ahead. They are sometimes called "Gypsy boys" although there is nothing specifically linking them to the Romani people.
He was an academically trained painter, working in post-war Venice as painter and restaurator, producing the Crying Boy pictures for tourists. At least 65 such paintings were made under the name Bragolin, reproductions of which were sold worldwide. In the 1970s he was found to be alive and well-to-do and still painting in Padua.
Claims that he fled to Spain after the war, painting children from a local orphanage which subsequently burned down, appear to be an unconfirmed urban legend.
