Franco Angeli
(Rome, 1935 – Rome, 1988)
Born in Rome, Franco Angeli started his artistic career at the atelier of Edgardo Mannucci, whom he worked with since 1957. At that time, Angeli approached Alberto Burri’s Art Informel, attracted by the artist’s use of materials and forms. In 1959 Angeli exhibited his works in a group show at La Salita Gallery in Rome, together with Tano Festa and Giuseppe Uncini. In those years the artist used to go to the Rosati bar, where he got close to Renato Guttuso, Pino Pascali, Jannis Kounellis, and Fabio Mauri. His first materic canvases of dark colours and layers of transparent voiles are dated back to the late 1950s. During the 1960s the artist developed a growing emphasis on mass imagery. He used images and stereotyped ideological symbols adapted from the urban context, synthetising the rhetorical aspect of the artifacts of an eternal Rome.
Among his solo and group exhibitions, we can mention: Franco Angeli (Galleria La Salita, Rome, 1960); Nuove prospettive della pittura italiana (Palazzo Re Enzo, Bologna, 1962); Roma New York 1948-1964 (Rayburn Foundation, New York, 1993); Venice Biennale (Venice, 1978; 1995); Il sogno fotografico di Franco Angeli 1976-1975 (Mercati di Traiano, Musei dei Fori Imperiali, Rome, 2011); Imagine. Nuove immagini nell’arte italiana 1960-69 (Peggy Guggennheim Collection, Venice, 2016).
