Italian painter. In 1945 he studied at the Istituto d’Arte Decorativa in Monza and later at the Accademia di Brera in Milan, where he took courses in sculpture. In this period he met Giacomo Manzù and became his pupil. Chighine’s career is linked to the history of Italian Art informel , of which he represented the naturalistic northern aspect. He was particularly influenced by Nicolas de Staël and Serge Poliakoff. In Milan in the mid-1950s he met Gino Ghiringhelli, the leading spirit of the Galleria Il Milione, who became a friend and admirer and who exhibited his work repeatedly until the late 1960s. In his painting Chighine focused particularly on creating a sensation of substance and light; in the early period of Art informel this tendency was expressed in tangles and clots of colour applied with a spatula and infused with light, comparable to the work of Ennio Morlotti. These were landscapes that expressed the continuous variations of nature according to time, day or season (e.g. Grey Sea , 1960; priv. col.). His art developed from the early scratched lines to the bright and vibrant precision of his painting of the 1960s, such as Composition (1968; priv. col., see 1977 exh. cat., no. 94). In the final years this evolved into a subtle balance of Chighine’s major concerns: luminosity, surface texture and flowing line. He displayed a passionate energy that did not, however, undermine his natural discretion and reserve.