Corrado Cagli (Ancona 1910 – Rome 1976) painter, theorist

In 1915, Corrado Cagli moved with his family to Rome.

From the late 1920s to the early 1930s, he worked with the Rometti ceramics factory in Umbertide, helping them come up with big new ideas.

In 1932 he had his first solo show at the same time as Adriana Pincherle at the Galleria di Roma. 

That year he started working with Giuseppe Capogrossi and Emanuele Cavalli.

After forming the New Roman Painting group in late 1932 in Rome, the three artists exhibited at the Galleria di Roma and, in 1933, at the Galleria il Milione in Milan.

In late 1933, while writing the Manifesto of Plastic Primordialism to be published alongside their exhibition at the Galerie Jacques Bonjean in Paris that year, they argued over theory and practical issues and ended their partnership.

Despite being barely in his twenties, Cagli was considered the leader of the new artistic generation in Rome. He inspired a group of young artists – Mirko, Afro, Alberto Ziveri, Renato Guttuso, and Pericle Fazzini – moving in the orbit of gallerist Dario Sabatello, in his twenties himself.

He was also heavily active as a theorist and critic for important journals like the rationalist architecture periodical Quadrante edited by P.M. Bardi and M. Bontempelli (the artist’s uncle).

From 1935 to 1938 he worked with the Galleria della Cometa, directed by Libero de Libero, starting with an exhibition of 50 drawings (1935). 

In 1936 he had a solo painting show there and in 1937-1938 he exhibited at Cometa’s New York space.

Faced with imminent racial persecution as a Jew, he took refuge in Paris and then New York (1939), where he opened a studio.

In 1941, having become an American citizen, he enlisted in the army and went to war in Europe. In Germany, he went to the Buchenwald concentration camp where he made a series of intense drawings. In 1947, Studio d’Arte Palma in Rome put on an exhibition of his new non-figurative works. 

He returned to Rome for good in 1948.

In 1951 he was part of the show Abstract and Concrete Art in Italy at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome. 

He won the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1946.

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