The first woman to have a significant impact on Parin was Ella Auler (1875 – 1962), an American Catholic from St. Louis.
Auler was a fellow student at the Munich Academy of Art (her mother was from Bavaria, so Ella often traveled to Germany). Parin had arrived in Munich at the age of 19 in 1895. Although it was unclear when the two first met, records indicate that Ella became pregnant in late 1897 and the two decided to get married the following June. Records further indicate that Parin converted to Catholicism a couple of weeks before the marriage: on June 11, he was baptized in Munich’s Capuchin Convent of Saint Anthony. Their son, Edgar, was born in late September, and their daughter, Marietta, in 1901. Gino and Ella remained together in Munich until 1906, when they divorced. Ella stayed in Germany until 1922 but Gino moved back to Trieste just before the outbreak of World War I. She is buried in the city of her birth.
Fanny Tedeschi (1879 – 1927), who belonged to one of Trieste’s most influential Jewish families, entered Parin’s life first as his landlady.
After his divorce, he traveled back and forth between Munich and Trieste, where he lived with Fanny and her husband, Moisè. Fanny’s features were striking, and soon she became one of his most important models. Parin even used her portrait for the Virgin Mary in his first monumental Catholic-themed painting, The Madonna of Trieste (1911). At some point, Fanny and Parin became lovers, a relationship that lasted until her premature death from cancer. Moisè knew about and accepted their liaison.
Three years after Fanny’s death, Gino met Maddalena (Magda) Springer, then an aspiring artist.
Magda was 21 and Gino 54. He became her teacher, and she also modeled for him.
Their initial mentor-student relationship blossomed into a deep friendship over time. They painted portraits of each other and attended the same German Catholic church from which Parin received a commission to paint a picture of Jesus. This Cristo canvas was never completed because the German Gestapo arrested him in April of 1944.
When Magda learned of Parin’s death in the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen in 1944, she was devastated. She held onto many of Parin’s paintings and artworks until she passed away in 1979. This is how some of his work eventually made it into the collection of her brother, Necki.
The postcard on the left, now in the collection of Patricia Mongini, was sent to Parin in 1938 from Munich to
his Trieste residence, Via Besenghi 31. The stamp with the swastika reads: “MÜNCHEN – Hauptstadt der
Bewegung” [Munich – Capitol of the Movement (this refers to the Nazi movement)]. A second stamp celebrates
THE DAY OF GERMAN ART. The writer starts with a hidden sarcastic comment, “Munich is ‘the capital of
the movement’—in art,” followed by a term of endearment: “But nothing can turn me away from you because I
love you very much [h.D.i.l.].” It is possible that Magda sent this postcard to Parin.
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