Born into a family of Valle Vigezzo farmers in 1870, he attended the Rossetti Valentini Art School[1] in Santa Maria Maggiore - where he became close friends with other future painters such as Carlo Fornara, Gian Maria Rastellini and Lorenzo Peretti Junior - for five years, beginning in 1882, absorbing the teachings of Enrico Cavalli, a great connoisseur of the French art of the era and the historic innovator of painting in Valle Vigezzo.
In the late 1880s, he received a two-year scholarship to attend the Scuola libera del nudo at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice.
In the company of his friend and fellow painter Carlo Fornara, he spent a long period in Lyon between 1895 and 1896 studying the great masters and learning about the new painting on the other side of the Alps.
He took part in numerous exhibitions in Italy and abroad, and, after gradually abandoning Divisionism, arrived at the Venice International Art Exhibition [it] of 1907 with the painting Preludio di primavera (Prelude to Spring), making extensive use of impasto and retaining the luminosity of his earliest works, but with the addition of a melancholy lyricism typical of Neo-impressionism, often entrusted to compositions of broad and powerful scope as in paintings Ritorno all’alpe (Return to the mountain pasture) and Toceno al tramonto (Toceno at sunset).
At the outbreak of the Great War, Ciolina left Milan and retired to Valle Vigezzo, where he continued to paint landscapes, still lifes and religious frescoes until his death.