Annapia ANTONINI

Annapia Antonini – Biography, Colour Aquatints and Watercolours

Annapia Antonini (born Lugano, 1942) is a Swiss painter, watercolourist and printmaker who has worked in Paris since 1962. A pupil of the Académie Julian and of Johnny Friedlaender’s etching studio, she is best known for intimate colour etchings and aquatints of still lifes, interiors, flowers and landscapes. In Britain her work is represented in the University of Warwick art collection, and it was long handled by English dealers.

Le Coin des Arts offers a choice of her original watercolours, each a unique work, among them Août dans le Var (1995), Le grand champ (1997), La Sera (2024), Fin de l’Hiver (2025), Les prunes and Tre ortensie, alongside prints: the etchings and aquatints La batavia (1994) and Trio, the aquatints Ciel d’aube (1991) and Le mur (2009), and four engraved greetings cards for the Galerie Michel in Paris (1980 to 1992), each chosen for colour, impression and condition.

Ticino and the Académie Julian

Antonini grew up in Italian-speaking Switzerland and first learnt to draw with the Ticino painter Giuseppe Bolzani. In 1962 she moved to Paris, where at the Académie Julian she studied drawing under Édouard Mac-Avoy and painting under Pierre Jérôme; Swiss sources also name the painter-engraver Pierre Guastalla among her teachers.

Learning Intaglio with Friedlaender

At the same time she joined the studio of Johnny Friedlaender, the German-born master who had opened his Paris workshop in 1949 and who trained a generation of printmakers in colour aquatint. Her first exhibition was held in Switzerland in 1964, followed by Sweden in 1966, the Bateau-Lavoir in Paris in 1967 and the Galerie Kieffer in Paris in 1969.

Antonini’s Prints: Technique and Editions

Her method is classic intaglio: a delicate etched line, then several aquatint grounds laid one over another to build translucent colour, occasionally with touches of drypoint. Sheets are small, from greetings cards of about ten centimetres square to plates of roughly 30 × 40 cm. Typical editions number 100 impressions on BFK Rives wove paper, signed, titled and numbered in pencil, as with Les petits poissons rouges (c. 1975) and Pot au lait (c. 1980). Later plates keep the same economy: Ciel d’aube (1991), a small seascape in aquatint and drypoint, was issued in 99 impressions. No catalogue raisonné of her prints has, to our knowledge, been published, so a print is identified by its title, date, edition and any publisher’s note.

An International Career and Public Collections

From the 1970s Antonini exhibited across Europe, in Japan and in the United States, and was taken up by dealers in England as well as in France, Switzerland and Germany. The critic Anthony Dawson spoke of ‘the poetry of everyday things’ in her work. The University of Warwick art collection holds her Paysage d’orage; other holdings include the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Swiss National Library in Bern and the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The Galerie R.-G. Michel, 17 quai Saint-Michel, which commissioned annual engraved cards from Friedlaender and Arthur Luiz Piza, published several of hers.

Watercolours and Later Years

Alongside printmaking she paints in oil and, above all, in watercolour: fields, gardens, fruit and summer light. She now divides her time between Paris and Bellinzona; in 2023 the exhibition Due Mondi at Giubiasco paired her with the sculptor Gualtiero Mascanzoni.

Collecting Annapia Antonini: A Buyer’s Guide

Edition. Most editions are of 99 or 100 impressions; the Galerie Michel cards ran to about 500. See the printing.

Signature. Look for a pencil signature lower right, with title and number in the margin. See the signature.

Greetings cards. These are genuine original prints, folded and printed with a seasonal message inside; a fold is normal, not a defect.

Watercolours. Each is unique and signed by the artist; recent sheets such as La Sera (2024) and Fin de l’Hiver (2025) come directly from her later work in watercolour.

Provenance. The printed text inside a Galerie Michel card, or an old gallery label, helps to date and place a sheet.

Condition. Pale aquatints and watercolours fade in strong light. Choose UV-filtering glazing when framing; our guarantees are set out on the authenticity page.

We show Antonini alongside her teacher Johnny Friedlaender, Arthur Luiz Piza, Jacques Villon and James Coignard. Explore also contemporary art and our engravings and lithographs.

Sources and further reading

University of Warwick Art Collection – Annapia Antonini · Fitch-Febvrel Gallery – Annapia Antonini · National Gallery of Art – Still-Life, 1980 · Gallery Online – Biography · laRegione – Due Mondi, 2023