Alberto Magnelli was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 modern

Modern art

Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...

 painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

 who was a significant figure in the post war

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 Concrete art

Concrete art

Concrete art and design or concretism is an abstractionist movement that evolved in the 1930s out of the work of De Stijl, the futurists and Kandinsky around the Swiss painter Max Bill. The term "concrete art" was first introduced by Theo van Doesburg in his "Manifesto of Concrete Art"...

 movement.

Biography

Magnelli was born in Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

 on July 1, 1888. In 1907 he started painting and, despite lacking formal art education, by 1909 he was established enough to be included in the Venice Biennale

Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...

. His initial works were in a Fauvist style. Magnelli joined the Florentine avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 befriending artists including Ardengo Soffici

Ardengo Soffici

Ardengo Soffici , was an Italian writer, painter and Fascist intellectual.-Life:Soffici was born in Rignano sull'Arno, near Florence...

 and Gino Severini

Gino Severini

Gino Severini , was an Italian painter and a leading member of the Futurist movement. For much of his life he divided his time between Paris and Rome. He was associated with neo-classicism and the "return to order" in the decade after the First World War. During his career he worked in a variety of...

. He also visited Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 where he met Guillaume Apollinaire

Guillaume Apollinaire

Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....

 and the Cubists

Cubism

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...

 including Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

, Fernand Léger

Fernand Léger

Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...

, and Alexander Archipenko

Alexander Archipenko

Alexander Porfyrovych Archipenko was a Ukrainian avant-garde artist, sculptor, and graphic artist.-Biography:...

. By 1915 had adopted an abstract

Abstract art

Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...

 style incorporating cubist and futurist

Futurism

Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...

 elements.

Over the next few years Magnelli returned to figurative work and drifted away from the Italian avant-garde, which was becoming more supportive of Fascism

Fascism

Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

, which he opposed. By 1931 he had returned to abstraction in the form of concrete art

Concrete art

Concrete art and design or concretism is an abstractionist movement that evolved in the 1930s out of the work of De Stijl, the futurists and Kandinsky around the Swiss painter Max Bill. The term "concrete art" was first introduced by Theo van Doesburg in his "Manifesto of Concrete Art"...

 featuring geometric shapes and overlapping planes. He moved to Paris, where he joined the Abstraction-Création

Abstraction-Création

Abstraction-Création was a loose association of artists formed in Paris in 1931 to counteract the influence of the Surrealist group led by André Breton....

 group and became friends with Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...

, Jean Arp

Jean Arp

Jean Arp / Hans Arp was a German-French, or Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist in other media such as torn and pasted paper....

 and Sophie Taeuber. Following the invasion of France by the Nazis, Magnelli and his future wife, Susi Gerson, went to live in Grasse

Grasse

-See also:*Route Napoléon*Ancient Diocese of Grasse*Communes of the Alpes-Maritimes department-External links:*...

 with several other artists including the Arps. Some of the group, including Gerson, were Jewish so they were forced to hide. Despite this, the group was able to produce a number of collaborative works.

Following the Second World War, Magnelli returned to Paris which was to be his home for the rest of his life. He became a major figure in the post war concrete art movement and influenced artists such as Victor Vasarely

Victor Vasarely

Victor Vasarely was a Hungarian French artist whose work is generally seen aligned with Op-art.His work entitled Zebra, created by Vasarely in the 1930s, is considered by some to be one of the earliest examples of Op-art...

, Nicolas de Staël

Nicolas de Staël

Nicolas de Staël was a painter known for his use of a thick impasto and his highly abstract landscape painting...

 as well as the concrete artists in South America such as Hélio Oiticica

Hélio Oiticica

Hélio Oiticica was a Brazilian visual artist, best known for his participation in the Neo-Concrete group, for his innovative use of color, and for what he later termed "environmental art", which included Parangolés and Penetrables, like the famous Tropicália.- Early work :Oiticica's early works,...

. He again exhibited at the Venice Biennale, this time with a whole room. Major galleries organised retrospectives of his work.

Magnelli died on April 20, 1971 at his home in Meudon

Meudon

Meudon is a municipality in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is in the département of Hauts-de-Seine. It is located from the center of Paris.-Geography:...

, Paris.

Key Exhibitions

• Venice Biennale (1909)
• Galleria Materassi, Florence (1921) (his first solo exhibition)
• Pesaro Gallery, Milan (1929)
• Galerie Pierre, Paris (1934) (his first major exhibition in Paris)
• Nierendorf Gallery, New York (1937) (his first solo exhibition in the USA)
• René Drouin Gallery (1947)
• Venice Biennale (1950)
• São Paulo Biennial (1951) (awarded second prize)
• Palace of Fine Arts, Brussels (1954) (his first full retrospective exhibition)
• Documenta II, Kassel [1955)
• Kunsthaus, Zürich (1963) (major retrospective celebrating his 75th birthday)
• Museum of Modern Art, Paris (1968)