Alberto Magnelli ~ 1962

View image full screen View image full screen View image full screen View image full screen

< Previous Next >

  • Alberto Magnelli ~ 1962
  • Alberto Magnelli ~ 1962 alternative image
  • Alberto Magnelli ~ 1962 alternative image
  • Alberto Magnelli ~ 1962 alternative image

Alberto Magnelli (1888-1971)
Untitled Composition
1962
Etching and aquatint
Signed 'Magnelli' 'E/a XXV sur 25'
14 x 10 ins / 34.5 x 25 cms
Sheet 23 x 15 ins / 57 x 38 cms
Literature
Paroles Peintes I
Ed. Lazar-Vernet, Paris

Sold

Additional Information

Alberto Magnelli (1888-1971)

Alberto Magnelli was born in Florence on 1st July 1888. He was an Italian painter who played a significant role in the post war concrete art movement.

Magnelli had no formal art education. Initially, his works were in a Fauvist style. After exhibiting at the Venice Biennale in 1909, Magnelli joined the Florentine avant-garde which included the artists Ardengo Soffici (1879-1964) and Gino Severini (1883-1966). He also visited Paris where he met the French poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) and the Cubists including Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, and Alexander Archipenko. By 1915 Magnelli had adopted an abstract style incorporating cubist and futurist 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, which he opposed. He returned to abstraction in the form of concrete art in 1933 with works featuring geometric shapes and overlapping planes.

He moved to Paris, where he joined the Abstraction-Création group and became friends with Wassily Kandinsky, Jean Arp and Sophie Taeuber. Following the invasion of France by the Nazis, Magnelli and his future wife, Susi Gerson, went to live in Grasse with several other artists including Jean Arp (1886-1966)

Following the Second World War, Magnelli returned to Paris. He became a major figure in the post war concrete art movement and influenced artists such as Victor Vasarely (1906-1997), Nicolas de Staël (1914-1955) and the South America artist Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980).

Magnelli exhibitions include Venice Biennale (1909), Galleria Materassi, Florence (1921) (his first solo exhibition), Pesaro Gallery, Milan (1929), Galerie Pierre, Paris (1934), Nierendorf Gallery, New York (1937), René Drouin Gallery (1947), Venice Biennale (1950), São Paulo Biennial (1951), Palace of Fine Arts, Brussels (1954) (his first retrospective exhibition), Documenta II, Kassel [1955), Kunsthaus, Zürich (1963) (retrospective to celebrate his 75th birthday) and the Museum of Modern Art, Paris (1968)

Magnelli died on 20th April 1971 at his home in Meudon, Paris, aged 82.