Alberto MAGNELLI

Magnelli was born in Florence 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. His initial works were in a Fauvist style. Magnelli joined the Florentine avant-garde befriending artists including Ardengo Soffici and Gino Severini. He also visited Paris where he met Guillaume Apollinaire and the Cubists including Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, and Alexander Archipenko. By 1915 he had adopted an abstract style incorporating cubist and futurist elements.
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 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, Nicolas de Staël as well as the concrete artists in South America such as Hélio Oiticica. He again exhibited at the Venice Biennale