Alberto Magnelli (after) - Composition - Woodcut 1959

Alberto Magnelli (after) - Composition - Woodcut Conditions: excellent 32 x 24 cm 1959 XXe siècle, San Lazzaro Alberto Magnelli was born in 1888 in Florence (Italy). He did not study in any Art School or Academy but learnt to paint in self taught. He enjoyed and preferred diligent visits of museums and churches. At first and until approximately 1914, he was a representational artist and painted landscapes, persons, still lives. After this date, his compositions became little by little abstract; he named them ''invented canvases''. His first personal exhibition took place in 1921. In the twenties, then the thirties (after he came back to a representational art), he painted imaginary landscapes in a spirit close to the metaphysical painting. In 1931, Alberto Magnelli settled down in Paris. He established there friendly relationship with Picasso, Leger, Apollinaire, Arp, Matisse, Chirico, Sonia Delaunay, … He began from 1931 till 1934, the series of ''Pierre'', in which he showed forms inspired by Carrara’s marble quarries; These assembled stones seemed to tell a story, the artist showing in this work the flexibility of drapes or the rigour of a personal architecture. From 1934, Magnelli was definitively in the abstraction. At the same time he painted, the artist devoted himself to his graphic work, etchings and lithographs. During the Second World War, Magnelli settled down in the South of France. Hans Arp set up “the group of Grasse'' (Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Sonia Delaunay, etc.). In the forties, Magnelli created collages in which he used burned sheet steels, sackcloths and painting. He painted with gouache on pupil's slates. After war, Magnelli became attached to compositions where geometrical forms, ellipses and lines, appeared in aplats on plain backclothes. Alberto Magnelli created little by little his own universe, and expressed himself in the geometrical abstract style, tending to privilege methodical arrangement with harshness. He died in Meudon (France) in 1971.