Colavini trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he attended the lessons of the portraitist Franz von Lenbach with whom he became friends. Subsequently, after leaving the city, he undertook several journeys that took him to Venice, Florence, Rome and Paris where he came into contact with Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting. In 1898 he returned to Udine and dedicated himself especially to portraits characterized by Nordic naturalism, but he was also a sensitive copyist of eighteenth-century Venetian painting. In addition to being a painter, Colavini was a restorer and engraver.