Born in Treppo Carnico in 1910, Enrico De Cillia left his hometown at the age of 13 to go to Udine, where he learned the first rudiments of art in the studio of Carnese painter Giovanni Moro. In those years, he learned the technique of frescoes and then collaborated in the realization of them in numerous Friulian churches. Until 1940 he practiced this profession, but at the same time he cultivated a passion for painting and exhibited in some Udine and Venetian exhibitions with small landscapes and still lifes in dark tones.

Having reached his artistic maturity after the Second World War, he focused on his works in the karst area, which is why he became known as the “Painter of the Karst”. The lyrical and evocative landscapes that dominate his canvases represent the main theme of vegetation in any season, although he preferred the autumnal for the colors and hues tending towards somber tones. His landscapes are isolated and lonely, man is absent: the inaccessible and dusty places thus become a profound and bitter transfiguration of human existence. Subsequently, his painting will tend more and more to the structural aspects of form, moving away from pure description. His painting is dominated by a fast, almost monochromatic stroke, with sudden bursts of color, the way he chose to express his view of nature as a mirror of his emotions.

In 1954 he founded the Galleria del Girasole in Udine, committed to the promotion of contemporary art and forming his own collection full of works, the substantial core of which forms part of his donation to the Galleria D’Arte Moderna “Enrico De Cillia”.