Alberto Magnelli Biography
(Florence, 1 July 1888 – Meudon, 20 April 1971). He participated in the most important international exhibitions of Abstract Art as well as in the Venice Biennials, the Rome Quadrennials and the Documenta in Kassel and exhibited, among other things, in Paris, Hamburg, Berlin, Oslo , Copenhagen, Lisbon, Liège, London, Dublin, Strasbourg, Innsbruck, Essen, Zurich, Basel, Geneva, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brussels, Eindhoven, New York, with large retrospectives. Internationally renowned artist is considered one of the leaders and first initiators of European Abstractionism. Magnelli was an attentive scholar of the Tuscan Great Masters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and began to paint self-taught since 1907 in a post-impressionist style. In 1914 he stayed in Paris and in the same year he switched to abstractionism for in 1915 he created completely abstract paintings with geometric shapes which are among the first examples of this kind of research. In 1918 he created the lyrical explosions, abstract paintings where the expressive force of color emerges vigorously but where human figures can also be glimpsed. He later elaborated a personal vision of painting, creating a current that he himself defined as imaginary realism, rigorously painting figures, landscapes, boats and some still lifes. In the 1930s he definitively returned to abstractionism with geometric shapes, passing, after a trip to Carrara, from the study of heavy masses with light volumes suspended in the air.
