Lallo was born the 13th of October 1912 in Bari, from Antonio de Palma and Emma Bianchi. His father, a lawyer, becames "preside della Provincia" and to better administer the public affairs decided to renounce (partially) at the incomings of the private studio - very famous in Bari. His passion for the paintings and for the culture and public operas, makes him valorize the Pinacoteca of Bari. Lallo's passion for painting was inherited from the father, which after the studies in law, started to study paintings in Naples, during the end of the 19th century.

While visiting one of his friends, Luigetto Bianchi, in Fasano, Lallo saw the beauty of his young daughter Emma, who lived quite alone in that big villa under the protection of his jelous father. She used to live there between the church and the beautiful garden of the villa (as she said to her nephews once becamed old). Being so pure, makes Lallo so strong to ask for the lady's hand to his father. They had three childs: Gino, who becamed a master mariner; Franca, who married the magistrate Ignazio Straniero, becomed general attorney at Corte di Cassazione; and the last one, Angelo Michele.

When Lallo was a scholar was very smart, with a good memory and a good attitude for studies (at the age of 80 he knows by heart poems by Trilussa and Pascarella). While there he did caricatures of all his school friends, parents, famous people, and some of those caricatures are still at his sons hands. His ability to capture the expression of the subject with speedy and smart hand was known by anyone and always generated enthusiastic laughter (except for the unfortunate ones with poor self-irony!).

It must be said that being the son of a renowned citizen in the city made life easy for the young Lallo who, however, was eager to test himself, even as a sportsman. He therefore chose rowing at the Barion company. There he trained in the Bari sea in the early morning to exploit the absence of waves, showing great application, passion and spirit of sacrifice. These qualities were rewarded with the often victorious participation in many competitions, until the conquest of the Italian title with the "four with" in 1936. He also loved the sailboat, with which (an Olympic iole) trained in the waters in front of the city.

Given his good physical condition, he was contacted by the sculptor Filippo Cifariello (father of the actor Antonio), who asked him to be his model for the naked athlete bronze, now visible on the facade of the "Palazzo della Provincia" of Bari. In 1934 was called to lend military service to the Officers Academy, and he had surprisingly chosen, given the curious and exploring soul, the Alpine corps, going to the Dolomites to learn about mountain life and alpine skiing.

Previously, Lallo graduated with full marks from the Faculty of Jurisprudence of Bari, for which, after completing his military service, he could successfully start the legal activity at the family office. But unfortunately, a few years later, the Second World War broke out, forcing him to leave for the front of Albania and Greece. In 1942 he was promoted to captain. He will never want to talk about the horrors experienced (he destroys hundreds of documentary photos because he hopes to remove the memory) and tells only those episodes that testify to his reckless character.

In 1948 Lallo met Maria Riccardi, known as Mabi, daughter of Carlo Riccardi. The meeting took place through the parents, at the villa of the Riccardi in Selva di Fasano. Mabi falls in love with him and thus manages to overcome the pain of the loss of the boyfriend who died at the front and of the brother who was missing in Russia (he had been a Red Cross nurse in field hospitals, just like his way of looking after the his two loved ones). Lollo and Mabi get married and have two children: Emma, ​​an architect by trade and a painter by passion; and the one who writes these notes, a doctor and also a painter of abstract, expressive and material themes at the same time. Both children, therefore, have resumed and renewed the paternal teaching, which, although based on a classically figurative painting, fundamentally focused on the emotional and poetic expression generated by the color, rather than on the actual drawing.

In the early years of his marriage, Lallo lived in Bari, but then, having closed his law firm with his father, he moved with his family to Rome. However, the contact with Puglia remains very much alive, because every summer he spent several months in his father-in-law Riccardi's villa in Selva di Fasano, a place that will become the greatest source of inspiration for his paintings, in addition to the marinas of Savelletri and its surroundings. In Rome, Lallo continues its forensic activity, but increasingly feels dissatisfied with his work. The artist and the poet who are in him recalcitrate and want to come out into the open. Finally he takes canvas, oil paints and brushes, and produces the first landscapes and then the first portrait (which he will later consider among the most successful).

Since then, the passion for painting, which blossomed incredibly at 38 years and preceded by caricatures alone, will no longer leave him until his death. He discovers the Muse and leaves his job as a lawyer, with the support and total approval of his wife, who bravely understands his great talents and the needs of his soul as an artist. Many of Lallo's exhibitions have taken place since his premiere, organized in the Galleria S. Marco in Via del Corso in Rome, which allowed people to admire his paintings and buy them. However, Lallo has always been shy about contacting the critics, who he considered - wrongly - not necessary to have public success and to be welcomed in museums and prestigious galleries.

For years he attended the School of Nude of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, directed by the painter Turcato, but, as he confided, he did so only to have the models available to portray, and not to learn the art of drawing or 'color combination, quality that he had innate. During the summer holidays in Selva di Fasano, of which he was deeply in love, one could easily meet him intent on painting a view that at first framed forming a square with his hands to delimit the painting and evaluate its effect. He stood in front of the canvas mounted on the usual easel for hours (even the whole day), without drinking or eating, totally absorbed by his work.

The last exhibition was an anthology of all his works at the Palazzo Braschi in Rome, sponsored by the Municipality. Despite the paintings sold and the many given away (in this he was very generous), he left to his heirs a considerable amount of oil paintings on canvas: portraits, nudes, still lifes and of course landscapes, divided into Roman and Apulian views, in particular taken from Selva di Fasano, Monopoli, Savelletri, Fasano and Ostuni. Many still are, then, drawings, sketches, caricatures. Of him, on the other hand, almost all the articles he published in "Il Tempo" in Rome and in the "Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno", which outlined the nature of a sarcastic and paradoxical writer, with a refined and captivating style, were lost.

In the walks made in the last years of his life with the undersigned, he told me that he had the strange gift of synaesthesia, that is, he saw the colors of the paintings and at the same time he generated the sensation of hearing musical harmonies, a scientifically proven faculty, which he considered completely natural, having it since birth. He also confessed to being very curious to see what he would encounter after his death, which he had always challenged without caring at all. If there had been anything in the afterlife, he said that surely it would have been for him to paint celestial canvases with colors made of luminous energy. And so it must have been.

Antonio De Palma