Magnelli, Alberto (1888-1971) - 1914 The Drunk Man (Christie's London, 2007)
Oil on canvas; 99.5 x 75 cm.
Italian painter. He was born into a wealthy family of textile traders and, on the death of his father in 1891, his education was supervised by his uncle Alessandro. From 1907 he taught himself to paint by visiting galleries and studying Quattrocento fresco cycles, especially those by Paolo Uccello and Piero della Francesca. From 1911, through the circle of Giovanni Papini and Ardengo Soffici, Magnelli came into contact with Futurism and the international avant-garde: he responded to Cubism through the reproductions in Guillaume Apollinaire’s Les Peintres cubistes: Méditations esthétiques (Paris, 1913) but infused his large figures constructed from simplified curved planes with an individual use of bold colour (e.g. Workers on the Cart, 1914; Paris, Pompidou). In March 1914 he traveled with the poet Aldo Palazzeschi to join Soffici, Papini and Carlo Carrà in Paris, where he met Apollinaire, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger and others. Commissioned to expand his uncle’s collection, Magnelli bought works by Picasso, Juan Gris, Carrà and three of the most controversial sculptures at the Salon des Indépendants: Alexander Archipenko’s Medrano II and Carrousel Pierrot (both 1913; New York, Guggenheim) and The Boxers (1913–14, New York, MOMA). The solidity and colour of his own work impressed Apollinaire, who encouraged Magnelli’s move towards ‘pure’ painting.
Magnelli, Alberto (1888-1971) - 1914 The Drunk Man (Christie's London, 2007)
Oil on canvas; 99.5 x 75 cm.
Italian painter. He was born into a wealthy family of textile traders and, on the death of his father in 1891, his education was supervised by his uncle Alessandro. From 1907 he taught himself to paint by visiting galleries and studying Quattrocento fresco cycles, especially those by Paolo Uccello and Piero della Francesca. From 1911, through the circle of Giovanni Papini and Ardengo Soffici, Magnelli came into contact with Futurism and the international avant-garde: he responded to Cubism through the reproductions in Guillaume Apollinaire’s Les Peintres cubistes: Méditations esthétiques (Paris, 1913) but infused his large figures constructed from simplified curved planes with an individual use of bold colour (e.g. Workers on the Cart, 1914; Paris, Pompidou). In March 1914 he traveled with the poet Aldo Palazzeschi to join Soffici, Papini and Carlo Carrà in Paris, where he met Apollinaire, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger and others. Commissioned to expand his uncle’s collection, Magnelli bought works by Picasso, Juan Gris, Carrà and three of the most controversial sculptures at the Salon des Indépendants: Alexander Archipenko’s Medrano II and Carrousel Pierrot (both 1913; New York, Guggenheim) and The Boxers (1913–14, New York, MOMA). The solidity and colour of his own work impressed Apollinaire, who encouraged Magnelli’s move towards ‘pure’ painting.