Angeli Franco

WORKS

BIOGRAPHY

EXHIBITIONS

Biography

ROMA, 1935 – ROMA, 1988

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

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