Acerbi was born in Milan. He attended the municipal school of painting in Pavia from 1900 to 1909 as a pupil of Carlo Sara, Romeo Borgognoni and Giorgio Kienerk, and was awarded the Lauzi Prize in 1907 and the Frank Prize (subsequently revoked due to a procedural error) in 1910. The artist's father Ezechiele, a well-known landscape painter and leading figure in the artistic circles of Pavia, played a crucial part in his training as a naturalistic painter. Acerbi took part in exhibitions in Turin and Milan from 1908 with a repertoire of landscapes, portraits and flower paintings based on his father's more commercially successful models. Acerbi distinguished himself as a portrait painter with a clientele in Milan and Pavia, and received official commissions for history paintings and religious frescoes from various bodies in the Lombardy region. He died in Pavia.
