Alberto Magnelli

Biography

In 1907 he started painting and, despite lacking formal art education, by 1909 he was established enough to be included in the Venice Biennale. Magnelli joined the Florentine avant-garde befriending artists including Gino Severini. He visited Paris where he met Guillaume Apollinaire and the Cubists including Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, and Alexander Archipenko. In Paris he joined the Abstraction-Création group and became friends with Wassily Kandinsky, Jean Arp and Sophie Taeuber.

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, this time with a whole room. Major galleries organised retrospectives of his work.