Queer Places:
Galleria della Cometa, Via della Tribuna di Tor de' Specchi, 18, 00186 Roma RM
Fontana dello Zodiaco, Piazza Cornelio Tacito, 05100 Terni TR
Julien Levy Gallery, 15 E 57th St, New York, NY 10022
Museo Al Deportato, Piazza Martiri, 68, 41012 Carpi MO
Archivio Corrado Cagli, Via della Fonte di Fauno, 12, 00153 Roma RM
Corrado Cagli ( Ancona , February 23, 1910 - Rome , March 28, 1976 ) was an Italian artist.
Cagli and the poet Libero De Libero directed La Cometa Gallery in Rome, which
became “the powerhouse of the school which was called Tonalism - which also
included Janni, Mafai, and Alberto Ziveri. In 1937, the Gallery launched an
exhibition in New York which also included
Filippo De Pisis. In 1915 De
Pisis met Carlo Carrà, Giorgio De Chirico and Alberto Savinio (De Chirico's
brother) in Ferrara and together they conceived metaphysical painting. In the
art of the 1920s there was a strong interest in the Renaissance painter Piero
della Francesco, of which the critic Roberto Longhi wrote a book in 1927. He
seemed to have promoted an exploration of the male body among many artists,
both homosexual and heterosexual, including Mafai,
Guglielmo Janni, Cagli, Ziveri, Fausto
Pirandello, Giuseppe Capogrossi, and Carrà.
Given fascist proscriptions against homosexuality, a surprising number of
artists under Mussolini's regime were queer:
Umberto Saba,
Sandro Penna, Corrado Cagli,
Filippo De Pisis,
Cesare Pavese,
Guglielmo Janni, and
Giovanni Comisso. Exploring the contribution of
Italy to the understanding of both the history of homosexuality and European
modernism, Queer ventennio : Italian fascism, homoerotic art, and the
nonmodern in the modern by John Champagne, a ground-breaking study, analyses
three queer modernists-writer Giovanni Comisso, painter and writer
Filippo De Pisis, and painter
Corrado Cagli. None self-identified as fascists; none, however, were
consistent critics of the regime. All understood their own sexuality via the
idea of the primitive - a discourse fascism also employed in its efforts to
secure consent for the dictatorship.
Corrado Cagli was born in Ancona on 23 February 1910 to Alfredo and Ada Della Pergola. Five years later, he moved with his family to Rome where he completed classical studies and attended the Academy of Fine Arts.
Already in 1925 - 1926, Cagli illustrated the covers and some internal pages of "La Croce Rossa Italiana Giovanile (The Italian Youth Red Cross)", a magazine for Italian primary and secondary schools. In 1927 he created a tempera for the ceiling of a club in via Sistina, a work that was later destroyed, while in the spring of the following year he made his debut with a work of craftsmanship, a "hearth" chest at the XCIV Exhibition of Fine Arts of the Society Amateurs and lovers of Fine Arts in Rome. Also in 1928 he created a mural in "lean tempera" for the hall used as a theater of the Campo Marzio - Trevi - Colonna neighborhood group of the PNF, in via del Vantaggio in Rome. No trace has remained of the lost work apart from a testimony by Dario Sabatello who in a writing evokes the themes: “They are scenes of life in the fields, in the workshops, in the gyms; plastic and sincere and heartfelt".
Sulla soglia della Galleria della Cometa. Si riconoscono, da sinistra, Mirko, Corrado Cagli, Sibilla Aleramo, Anna Laetitia Pecci Blunt, Alberto Moravia, Giuseppe Ungaretti, un’amica, Libero de Libero.
In 1929 , in Umbertide , he began working in the Rometti art ceramics factory where, the following year, he was appointed artistic director. In the same year, again in Umbertide, in the Mavarelli-Reggiani house, he painted a 60-meter fresco on the theme of the Battle of the Wheat, divided into twelve squares that cover the four walls of the room.
In April 1932 Cagli inaugurates a solo exhibition with Adriana Pincherle at the Galleria di Roma, directed by Pier Maria Bardi, in which he exhibits La Fortuna and various portraits - including the Portrait of Sclavi and Igino - studies, drawings, some ceramics and
the sculpture Portrait of Serena. Later he founded, together with Giuseppe Capogrossi and Emanuele Cavalli, the Group of New Roman Painters. At the end of the year he has already decorated some walls at the Roman Building Exhibition and carried out Preparations for War (an egg tempera on a 30 square meter wall) in the vestibule of the V Triennale di Milano when, at the invitation of the Archaeological Commission of Salerno , he goes to Paestum and probably also visits Naples and Pompeii. The trip, during which he paints and draws, will be important for his knowledge of Pompeian painting.
In 1933 he wrote the article "Muri ai pittori", fundamental for the history of Italian muralism, in which he formulated his theoretical-aesthetic foundations, supporting positions similar to those that Sironi was expressing in the same period.
In December 1933, Cagli moved to Paris where he exhibited together with Capogrossi, Cavalli and Sclavi at the Galerie Jacques Bonjean. Organized by Count Emmanuele Sarmiento, the exhibition is presented in the catalog by the critic Waldemar George who groups the four young artists under the Ecole de Rome label. Cagli exhibits Portrait of the painter Prieto, Oedipus, The dove, Still life, Composition. The exhibition has numerous reviews, both on Italian and French soil.
The II Quadrennial of National Art, ordered by CE Oppo, opens in February 1935 at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. Cagli exhibits four removable wall panels for the rotunda set up by Piero Aschieri. The panels, almost 4 meters high, depict the theme of the reclamation of the Agro Pontino (they consist of a Protasi and three Chronicles of the time). It also presents a large number of works: La Romana, The neophyte, The Palatine, Portrait of Afro, L'Angelica, The Sabaudesi, The night of San Giovanni , The neophytes, Composition, Battle, Seven brushes and six drawings. He was awarded a prize of 10,000 lire. In 1932/33 he was commissioned to paint the polychrome decorations made on Venetian glass for the fountain of the Zodiac in Terni, damaged in the last world war.
He is in charge of the realization of two mural paintings for the building of Castel De' Cesari (today the National Academy of Dance) in Rome, renovated by the rationalist architect Gaetano Minnucci as the seat of the National Opera Balilla. One of the two murals depicts the race of the barbers, a re-enactment of the famous race of wild horses across the Corso to Piazza del Popolo. The Minister of Education Renato Ricci orders the destruction of the frescoes, following the censorship for thematic inadequacy. Hidden by a false wall, built by Cagli himself, the mural painting located in the library will be preserved, uncovered in the 1945 on the initiative of Mirko Basaldella. [4]
1935 was an important year for the young artist, since between April and May he held a first solo show of fifty drawings at the Galleria La Cometa of the Countess Anna Laetitia (Mimi) Pecci Blunt, directed by Libero De Libero and Cagli himself, inaugurated in that occasion. Until 1938, largely thanks to the influence of Cagli, the gallery will carry out an important work of cultural diffusion of an anti-nineteenth century style. The catalog contains a text by Massimo Bontempelli, uncle of Cagli, on the drawing.
In 1936 the VI International Triennial was inaugurated at the Palazzo dell'Arte in Milan. Cagli presents on the back wall of the Italic Priority room, created by the BBPR group, a large painting, 6x6 meters, in encaustic tempera on a paneled panel, The battle of San Martino and Solferino. Of the large mural, made in separate panels in the Roman studio and then mounted only in Milan, there are no cartoons or overall drawings, but only a sketch made for the presentation.
On May 26, 1937, the “Exposition Internationale des Arts et des Techniques” was inaugurated in Paris. Cagli, helped by Afro Basaldella, his collaborator, creates a series of large paintings (about 200 linear meters) in encaustic tempera on a paneled panel for the decoration of the vestibule of the Italian pavilion. The paintings depict monumental images of Rome and portraits of the great Italians from the Roman era to the Risorgimento.
The 21st Venice Biennale opens in June 1938. Cagli participates with a fresco on plaster, Orpheus enchanting the beasts, of which there is a preparatory cartoon.
At the end of 1938 he was forced to choose the path of exile, following the proclamation of the racial laws and the intensification of anti-Semitic attacks against his person and his work. He first settled in Paris where he continued to exhibit and, at the end of 1939, from Cherbourg, he embarked for New York.
In New York City his art does not go unnoticed and he exhibits some time after his arrival at the renowned
Julien Levy Gallery.
In 1941, in January, he held a solo show at the Civic Center Museum in San Francisco, but two months later Cagli joined the American army. However, his artistic activity does not cease, creating a large number of paintings and drawings and participating in exhibition events such as a solo show at the Shaeffer Gallery in Los Angeles and a solo exhibition of drawings at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford.
In 1943 he moved to Great Britain following the army and the following year he participated in the campaigns of France, including the Battle of Normandy, Belgium and Germany. In these years he realizes the famous cycle of drawings on the theme of war, among which the images portrayed at the Buchenwald concentration camp in whose liberation he took part among the allied troops stand out.
At the end of the war he returns to New York where he continues his activity experimenting with ever-changing techniques and styles and is one of the founders of The Ballet Society (today's New York City Ballet ) together with
George Balanchine and
Lincoln Kirstein. Within the company Cagli was the one who created the sets and costumes.
In 1948 he decided to return to Italy for good and settled in a studio in via del Circo massimo.
The stability and tranquility allow him to continue his path of analytical research in painting and to participate in exhibitions both in Italy and abroad. Numerous artists gravitate around him including Mirko Basaldella, Capogrossi , Alberto Burri, Renato Guttuso.
In the years 1949 - 1950, he participated in the constitution of the important Verzocchi collection, on the theme of work, sending, with a self-portrait, The Potter; the Collection is now kept in the Civic Art Gallery of Forlì.
Between the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s he was commissioned, together with other artists, to decorate the turbocharged Leonardo da Vinci. Cagli will make his contribution by setting up some areas of the ocean liner with Leonardo da Vinci's projects (such as the flight of birds, etc ...) and with six tapestries made with the contribution of the Arazzeria Scassa di Asti.
In 1963-64 he exhibited at the Peintures italiennes d'aujourd'hui exhibition, organized in the Middle East and North Africa.
At the beginning of the 1970s he created the graffiti for the Museo Monumento al Politico e Razziale Deportato in Carpi (Modena): the work represents the lifeless body of a naked deportee next to the fence of the camp. The original barbed wire under the graphic di Cagli, recalls the visitor to the symbolic meaning of oppression and deprivation of freedom that the barbed wire assumes in relation to the system of the fields. Today barbed wire has universally become the emblem of violence against man.
However, he did not leave the activity of set designer and costume designer, participating in numerous theatrical performances such as: Tancredi di Rossini, of 1952; Macbeth of Bloch, 1960; Estri di Petrassi, from 1968; Persephone by
Stravinsky, from 1970; Agnese di Hohenstaufen by Spontini, from 1974; Missa Brevis by Stravinsky, from 1975.
He died in Rome, in his home in Aventino, on March 28, 1976.
For over forty years the Corrado Cagli Archive , based in Rome in via della Fonte di Fauno n. 12, is the custodian of photos, texts, documents, but not only as it organizes exhibition events every year to keep the memory of this great artist alive.
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