Antonio Corpora

Antonio Corpora was born in Tunis in 1909, he graduated from the local Academy of Fine Arts and moved first to Florence and then to Paris, which was richer in possibilities for a young artist.

Here he deepened his studies on the painting of Cèzanne and Matisse and came into contact with the Italian artists present in the French capital, approaching post-Cubist ways, bordering on abstractionism.

After the Second World War he was among the protagonists of Fronte Nuovo delle Arti with Birolli, Fazzini, Franchina, Guttuso, Leoncillo, Morlotti, Pizzinato, Santomaso, Viani and Vedova.

He then joined the Gruppo degli Otto (Group of Eight) with which he took part in the Venice Biennale in 1952, where he also exhibited in 1956, 1960 and 1966. In 1954 and 1958 he took part in the Quadriennale in Rome, while in 1955 he exhibited at Documenta in Kassel.

The end of the 1950s and 1960s marked Corpora’s success, as he gradually abandoned his post-Cubist ways and moved towards a language based on signs and strong colours with a gradual reinsertion of reality.

He was invited to exhibit in many European cities such as Berlin in 1958, Oslo in 1960, the Kunsthalle in Hamburg in 1967, then the Tokyo Biennale in the same year and the Kleeman Galleries in New York in 1960.

In 1970 he took part in a prestigious group exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris with Picasso, Braque and Matisse. He died in Rome in 2004.