painter, was born in a castle in Villa Nuova, near Milan, daughter of a successful rice farmer. She studied art at Milan’s Brera Academy in 1909-10, adopting a late impressionist style and painting portraits and nudes. She also studied under Giovanni Sottocornola in Milan 1906-10. In 1911 she travelled to Canada where she was employed as a display artist at Eaton’s Store, Vancouver. There she met and married Mario Vigano. In 1919 they returned to Italy, but fled during the Mussolini Fascist regime after an attempt was made on Mario’s life. They reached Melbourne in January 1928, stripped of their Italian properties and most possessions, and spent years establishing themselves in the catering/restaurant business – years when Teresa had no time or opportunity to paint. She began painting again once the restaurant they established, called Mario’s, was flourishing, in spare moments between helping run the business and bringing up the three children. She took lessons from Arnold Shore and had a studio under the restaurant roof. One of her most successful portraits was of the ballet master Edouard Borovansky, who lunched daily at Mario’s.
Mario’s prospered and the Viganos purchased a thirty-hectare farm at South Morang. This provided produce for the restaurant and a studio overlooking the Plenty River for Theresa, where she painted landscapes. Her favourite subjects now were landscapes, flowers and portraits painted in a semi-modernist, impressionist style that shares features with the work of William (Jock) Frater and her teacher and friend, Arnold Shore. In the 1950s Vigano joined Shore on a painting expedition to Alice Springs.
She held her first solo exhibition called 'Thirty Years of Painting in Australia’, comprising twenty-four canvases, at La Feluca Gallery, Rome in 1963. It received rave reviews; she sold about half the pictures and the Italian Government commissioned a series of Alice Springs landscapes (which time did not allow her to carry out) and invited her to exhibit in Italy again. In 1965 she held two solo exhibitions in Australia: at the Victorian Artists’ Society rooms, Albert Street, East Melbourne, where she had exhibited for many years, and at the Myer Emporium in Adelaide. A commemorative exhibition was held at the Victoria College of the Arts Gallery, Melbourne, in June 1981. McCulloch notes that her landscapes and portraits are painted 'with great sensitivity’.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1999
- Last updated:
- 2011
