Giuseppe Franco Angeli was born in Rome on 14 May 1935 in the San Lorenzo district, to Gennaro Gennarini, an anti-fascist, and Erminia Angeli, whose surname he took, like his brothers Omero and Otello Angeli sang for the Allies in a radio broadcast and began working at the age of nine to provide for his ailing mother: first in the warehouses and then in an upholstery and body shop, learning the use of fabrics, silhouettes and cut-outs, which he would carry over into his works He did not attend regular art studies but began to paint in 1957, when he left for Orvieto in the army: ‘When a person has a deep malaise, he has to look for a way to no longer be alone, he has to ultimately find an interest that will accompany him through life,’ he would later recount
Back in Rome, in the Caserma Granatieri in the Prati district, he came into contact with the sculptor Edgardo Mannucci, a friend of Alberto Burri: Angeli was deeply fascinated by the latter’s work, so much so that he took up the worn materiality of the Catrami It is no coincidence that, referring to the work E da una ferita scaturì la bellezza (1957) – which is part of his earliest production and which takes its cue from the memory of the trauma experienced on the night of the bombing of San Lorenzo on 19 July 1943 – he will say: ‘The material for me is a fragment of this enormous laceration that has overwhelmed Europe; my first paintings were like this, like a wound from which you remove pieces of bandage where the blood has congealed but is no longer a red stain’, which seem to recall the bombings of the Second World War: in fact, for those who know and frequent him because of this attitude, the narrative tension in which the threads of personal experience are inextricably interwoven with those of history is evident in him
In 1980 he inaugurated a solo exhibition at the Sprovieri Modern Art Agency in Rome and in 1981 at the L’Indiano Gallery in Florence…
In November of the same year he was in Lecco in the exhibition 30 Years of Italian Art 1950-1980 In 1982 he produced the sets for the opera Girotondo at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and in 1983 he exhibited at the Galleria La Tartaruga in Rome in the exhibition dedicated to the Scuola di Piazza Del Popolo The following year he inaugurated several personal exhibitions, at the Studio d’Arte Celium in Rome, at the Belvedere di San Leucio in Caserta, and at the Galleria Grafica dei Greci in Rome He participated in the exhibitions Gli amici del cuore at Galleria Sprovieri in Rome, La macchina della memoria at Palazzo Rivaldi in Rome and Attraversamenti Linee della nuova arte contemporanea italiana in Perugia
The strong social and popular interest continued in the works of the 1980s, when Angeli resumed the theme of war in the series of exotic landscapes with pyramids, obelisks and aeroplanes ‘traced with apparent simplicity and clarity of contours, suspended and crystallised in an icy metaphysical spatiality’, which would later become true Explosions (1986); the forms became stylised and let spires, capitals and deserted squares emerge
The theme of the ‘marionette’, which appears more and more often after 1984, is a sort of self-portrait that seems to prelude the final phase of his life In 1985 he exhibited at the Civic Museum of Contemporary Art in Gibellina and in a one-man show at the Grafica dei Greci gallery in Rome In June 1986 he took part in the 11th Quadriennale in Rome, exhibited in a group show at the Galleria Fontanella Borghese in Rome and in a solo show at the Galleria d’Arte Ex Libris In April 1987 in Milan, he presented the short film Souvenir as part of the exhibition Art and Computers In 1988 he exhibited in the exhibitions Art against AIDS in Rome and Le Scuole Romane, developments and continuity, 1927-1988 in Verona His last solo exhibitions were held at the Galleria Rinaldo Rotta in Genoa, the Casa del Macchiavelli in San Casciano Val di Pesa and the Galleria Gregoriana in Rome
Angeli passed away in Rome on 12 November 1988
