“Ronde Oceanique” 1937, (oil on canvas 114 x 146 cm).
Born in Florence, on 1 July 1888, Italian modern painter Alberto Magnelli was a significant figure in the post-war Concrete Art movement. Starting off in 1907, despite having limited formal art education, Magnelli became established enough to be included in the Venice Biennial exhibition, two years later, in 1909.
Although his initial works were in the style of Fauvism, Magnelli joined the Florentine Avant-Garde artists and visited Paris where he met Guillaume Apollinaire and Cubist artists including Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, and Alexander Archipenko.
By 1915, Magnelli had adopted an abstract style incorporating both Cubist and Futurist elements.
- By 1931 he had returned to Abstraction in the form of Concrete Art 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 Taueber.
Following the WW2, 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.
- Magnelli died on April 20, 1971 at his home in Meudon, Paris.
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