Alessandro Poma (1874 – 1960), who was born in Biella in 1874, completed his classical education and enrolled at the Faculty of Jurisprudence in Turin.

He embarked on his career as an artist in the Piedmontese circles dominated at the time by such gifted painters as Fontanesi, Delleani, Avondo and Reycend, but very soon he moved to Rome, where he was privileged to take up residence in the so-called "Casina di Raffaello" in Villa Borghese.

He joined Giulio Aristide Sartorio's entourage in 1901 and was in close touch with a company of artists known as "I XXV della Campagna Romana" (the 25 of the Roman Countryside). He chiefly painted landscapes, largely inspired by Villa Borghese, but he also turned his attention to other themes such as figure painting, portraits and animalia, focusing in particular on swans, butterflies and animals grazing.

He showed his work in Rome, Turin, Milan and Venice but he turned his back on the world of exhibitions in 1910, though he continued to work in solitude for the rest of his life in the sincere belief that he needed to quit the artistic circles of the time if he was to express his talent (of whose value he was very much aware) in full.

He shut himself away in what was virtually complete isolation until his death in Courmayeur in 1960.

Recent monographic exhibitions of Poma's work include an exhibition curated by Maurizio Calvesi at the Museo Carlo Bilotti, Aranciera di Villa Borghese in 2007 with 62 paintings on display, and the exhibition that we held in our own gallery in 2009 entitled “Alessandro Poma, an Artist in Villa Borghese”.