Corrado Cagli Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Corrado Cagli (Ancona, 23 February 1910 – Rome, 28 March 1976) was an Italian artist. He became interested in painting at a very early age and some of his childhood drawings were published in Corriere dei Piccoli, in which his mother collaborated (the formative years were studied by E. Read the full biography

Corrado Cagli Biography

Corrado Cagli (Ancona, 23 February 1910 – Rome, 28 March 1976) was an Italian artist. He became interested in painting at a very early age and some of his childhood drawings were published in Corriere dei Piccoli, in which his mother collaborated (the formative years were studied by E. Crispolti in the catalog of the exhibition held in Siena, Pal. Pubblico, in 1985: Il C. romano, Milan 1985). Self-taught, he created a mural (now destroyed) in 1928 for the meeting hall of the fascist local group Campo Marzio-Trevi, in via del Vantaggio, representing scenes of life in the fields, in the gyms, in the workshops. Very little remains of his youthful activity, with the exception of some ceramics (ill. in catal., 1982, p. 55) and sculptures from the period 1929-30, when in Umbertide he worked at the Rometti ceramics factory which he then managed. We note in the few artefacts "a passage between "Art Déco" styles and a certain proto-twentieth-century style which was clearly establishing itself, even in the so-called "applied arts"" (Crispolti, 1982-83, p. 16). During his stay in Umbertide he created a fresco, which still exists, in the Mavarelli-Reggiani house, on the theme of the Battle of the Wheat (catal., 1982, p. 48). At the same time he participated in important initiatives such as the II Lazio Trade Union Exhibition and the Centenary Exhibition of the Society of Amateurs and Connoisseurs of Fine Arts in 1930. From 1931 he dedicated himself with commitment to easel painting and in 1932 he exhibited, in a first solo show at PM Bardi's gallery in Rome, together with A. Pincherle and then, in the same year, with G. Capogrossi and E. Cavalli with whom, after this exhibition, they formed the Group of new Roman painters (in 1933 they exhibited in Milan at the Milione gallery and then in Paris at the J. Bonjean gallery). C. was, until 1938, the leader of the group, which came to the attention of critics for its polemical opposition to the Novecento group. Admitted, in 1932, to the decoration competition for the National Artistic Pensioner, he participated with a painting, Icarus, which obtained the approval of the jury. He made a trip to Paestum and Pompeii and, influenced by Roman-Pompeian painting, translated historical and classical themes into monumental images, such as, for example, in the same year, in the decoration of a room of the Building Exhibition in Rome, The Dioscuri al lago Regillo (destroyed, ill. in catal., 1982, p. 30). In Milan he frequented the studio of A. Martini, where Mirko Basaldella worked, who later became an inseparable friend, collaborator and brother-in-law of C. (he married his sister Serena). The official invitation to participate in the 1933 Triennale kept him in Milan, for which he created the fresco Preparations for the war, in the vestibule of the new exhibition building (destroyed, ill. in catal., 1982, p. 30) . Returning to Rome, he was the soul of the group of artists who exhibited at the Sabatello gallery in via dei Babuino, open to the newest voices in art such as M. Marini, A. Donghi, A. Ziveri and P. Fazzini; he aroused the ostracism of militant critics who did not reward him in the decoration competition of the National Artistic Pensioner in which he presented himself with an unidentified political theme (Crispolti, C. and the school of Rome, p. 24). 1933 was, however, a fundamental year for C.'s poetics, which was expressed in the collaboration with writings and drawings, from May to October, at the magazine Quadrante (Milan), directed by PM Bardi and M. Bontempelli (who was uncle for marrying his mother's sister). In the famous article Muri ai pittori, which appeared in the first issue of May 1933 (p. 19, reproduced in catal., 1982, p. 295), he exalted the social and monumental function of art and, even more, hoped for the collaboration of the arts , in a "cyclical" vision of painting that was combined with the rational explanation of architecture. He criticized the "classical and archaic" twentieth-century neo-formalism, contrasting it with the "primordial". He therefore entered into a debate which involved, among others, M. Sironi who, in the Manifesto of mural painting, which appeared in La Colonna, in Milan, in December 1933, favored the social function in art. When in 1933 he exhibited at the Bonjean gallery in Paris, W. George's review mentioned a "neotimanism", whose mythopoetic relationships with the past have been, also in their links with the culture of M. Bontempelli, dissected by Crispolti (1985 , pp. 33 s.). From the "primordial" rediscovery of the form were born works such as The Berber Race of 1935, a large tempera on the wall for the headquarters of the Opera Balilla at the Castello dei Cesari (current National Dance Academy) in Rome, and the series of panels, always in tempera, on the theme The Battle of Solferino and San Martino, for the Milan Triennale in 1936, now at the Cagli Foundation in Florence. The work, of which there is a preparatory sketch in the Jacovitti collection in Rome, is a dynamic vision of battle and summarizes and enucleates, in renewed forms, a vast cultural heritage (Masaccio, Paolo Uccello, Piero della Francesca), in the sense, also, of identifying a consonance of moral and social values. In 1934, meanwhile, he had created the Venetian mosaic decoration with the symbols of the Zodiac for the bottom of the fountain in Piazza Tacito in Terni (architects M. Ridolfi and M. Fagiolo), which will be freely taken up by the artist in the reconstruction he will make of it between 1951 and 1961 (the work was destroyed by a bombing in 1943: ill. in catal., 1982, p. 49). Between 1934 and 1935 he accentuated his chromatic research in intimate themes of vases and still lifes, mostly exhibited at the Venice Biennale and at the Lazio Syndicate in 1936, themes that complemented others already treated of battles or hunts. Many works will be exhibited in the Roman gallery La Cometa, directed by L. De Libero, which C. inaugurated in the spring of 1935 with an exhibition of fifty drawings, presented by M. Bontempelli. For the artist, drawing was a liberating tool from all the cultural and intellectual stimuli that he continued to develop, often reaching notes of virtuosity in the male nudes, now at the Cagli Foundation, or in Judith and Holofernes (owned by L. De Laurentis, Rome), which refer to late sixteenth-century culture. From the beginning of 1937 the attacks of the fascist press against him, a Jew, intensified and the works with which he presented himself at the International Exhibition in Paris were accused of degeneracy: a series of large-format paintings, in whose drafting Afro collaborated Basaldella, on the theme of monumental Rome (Florence, Cagli Foundation) and the great Italians, from Caesar to the heroes of the Risorgimento, now dispersed among private and public collections (formerly ONPI of Turin and Pordenone). In reality the works are of a cultured and refined visionary secrecy, endowed with a very strong emotional charge, especially in the Roman views, but they do not respect the canons of monumental and uncritical celebration, with their set of banal but recognizable symbols, which are expected from official art. The opening of a New York branch of the La Cometa gallery and the frequent contacts with Paris offered C., who had still officially participated in the XXI Venice Biennale in 1938 and had exhibited in private galleries in Rome and Florence, the possibility to leave Italy at the end of the year. After a year's stay in France (he exhibited in 1939 at the Quatre Chemins gallery), he moved to New York, to stay with his sister Ebe (Cagli Seideberg, 1980). He exhibited at the Julien Levi Gallery in 1940, and the following year, having become an American citizen, he enlisted in the army and participated in the Second World War in Europe. The American years - he returned to New York again from 1946 to 1948 - were full of experiences: from Postcubism to Expressionism; in America he approached collage and frottage, studied the theories of light relationships and space of Donchian and Moebius, while continuing to demonstrate a very strong realistic sense of sign in the "war drawings": The Nights of London and the Norman Family of 1944, Buchenwald (Florence, Cagli Foundation) and Refugees of 1945. The dual abstract-figurative register intensifies in the post-war works, but does not contradict the previous artistic convictions expressed, for example, in 1933, in Corsivo n. 12, in Quadrant, I (1933), n. 2, p. 30: "The apparent eclecticism of the modern painter depends on having discovered the nature of pictorial genres. Just as poetic art has its genres, so pictorial art has its own which are not landscape and still life, but are the abstract and the formal". Having returned permanently to Italy in 1948 (he had already exhibited the previous year at the Palma art studio in Rome), he participated in the Venice Biennale of that year. He resumed a whirlwind activity as a designer (La strada del Po, 1951) and as a decorator: the facade of the building of the IX Triennale in Milan; the wall of a hall of the building for the 1960 agricultural exhibition in EUR. He practiced sculpture with poor materials, creating the Cicute series, between 1950 and 1955, with pieces of reeds, and models of "masks" and "portraits" made with colored cardboard, assembled with staples which, cast in bronze in a few examples, between 1960 and 1965, qualify as variations of the figurative research that the artist was simultaneously developing. Between 1970 and 1973, he created a monumental work in the square of Göttingen, on the site of the synagogue set on fire by the Nazis in 1938 (ill. catal., 1982, pp. 50 s.). Skillfully varying a basic geometric figure, the equilateral triangle, doubled to form the star of David, C. built, in stainless steel tubes, a pyramid which is articulated in a spiral due to the slight variation of the angles of the elements and enters in dynamic-perspective play with the surrounding space. C.'s activity from 1950 to his death is characterized by the variety of interests and research. He worked as a set designer with important directors and choreographers; we remember among others: Balanchine (1947 and 1948. in New York); Milloss (for the Rome Opera, 1956-57, 1968, 1969; for the Maggio musical fiorentino, 1970, 1971; for the Vienna State Opera, 1972); L. Squarzina (for the Olimpico of Vicenza, 1959; for the Scala of Milan, 1960); and F. Enriquez (for La Scala in Milan, 1960; for the Maggio musica fiorentino, 1974). In 1966 he collaborated on two scenes for the film The Bible by J. Huston with whom he had worked at La Scala the year before. He illustrated with sixteen drawings the Works of U. Foscolo published by L. Baldacci for the publisher Laterza (Bari 1962), and the Praise of Madness by Erasmus of Rotterdam, for the Curcio editions (Rome 1964). In painting he developed magical-totemic images in the "tablets" cycle of 1954-55 (Crispolti, 1968, pp. 12 ff.) of which the Harlequins series is part. Followed in time by the Carte of 1958-59 and the Siciliane of 1963-65, the Labyrinths of 1966, in which the artist's analytical spirit captures the most original directions of art with liveliness and, at times, with a touch of cerebralism contemporary: the informal and material from Wols to Burri, the spatial gesturalism from G. Crippa to G. Dova, the frottage of cards, with the sign-gestural meaning of M. Errist. Precisely the Papers exhibited by C. at the VIII Roman Quadrennial of 1959 and, in part, at the Venetian Biennale of 1964, seem to prelude, in their spatially rigorous and iconic setting, an overcoming of the informal, to which the latest works refer. After 1970, in fact, C. returned insistently, especially in graphics and pastels, to figuration which, stripped of prevailing social issues, takes the form of a perennial homage to man. C. died in Rome on 28 March 1976.