Essential Biography
Brancaleone Cugusi was born on 23rd September 1903 in Romana, a little town in the province of Sassari, son of the second marriage of the town’s doctor Leonardo Cugusi. On realizing his lack of commitment to school, his father called him to order in 1929.
Brancaleone openly declared his desire to embrace a pictorial career.
Historical biographical source
The life of Brancaleone da Romana can be reconstructed in large part thanks to the documents held by the relatives in Sardinia. His early period in Rome (1930-34), and the one spent in Cheremule (1936-40), are both well documented for the written attestations that were issued to the family and the numerous letters of correspondence between Brancaleone, his brother Guglielmo, and the Bachis sisters that financed him.
The rediscovery
By some good fortune the art critic Vittorio Sgarbi, in the summer of 2003, browsing through the publication Ilisso, noticed the paintings produced by Brancaleone. As he recalls, “at first I thought it was an error in attribution of the work”.