Traditionally, at the end of the year, Credito Valtellinese Group Gallery hosts major exhibitions of the works by artists who are all very well-known at international level. This year - in association with the fashion house Bally - the Gallery is presenting the works by Alberto Magnelli (1888-1971) to the Italian great public. Not so famous in his native country, in fact, Magnelli has been working for a long time in Paris and is very popular in France.
The exhibition - mounted under the supervision of Daniel Abadie from Paris Jeu de Paume and Dominique Stella - presents an overview of the works by the artist from Tuscany, including the early works (1913) as well as those of the late '50s. The exhibits, 90 oil paintings and a big series of graphic works, are part of the donation Magnelli of Paris and of private collections from Italy, Switzerland and France. The core of the exhibition (70 oil paintings painted in Italy between 1913 and 1935) is hosted at Credito Valtellinese Gallery of Milan. The gallery of Sondrio presents about twenty oil paintings of the period 1936-1969 and all the graphic works (100 sheets of the period 1934-1971).

Unlike the exhibition recently hosted at Villa dei Cedri in Bellinzona, which was basically meant to present the works Magnelli realised in the period he spent abroad, the exhibition hosted at Credito Valtellinese stands focuses on the Italian period, in particular on the various stages of Magnelli's artistic career, including his joining the futurist movement, the geometric style and the lyric abstractionism. His career starts in the first decade of the 20th century. In 1913, in Florence, he joins the futurists. He paints in a very distinctive way using pure, very bright colours. Two years later he takes an interest in the abstractionism.

In the early '30s, in Rome, he meets Italian young abstractionists Reggiani, Veronesi, Fontana, Soldati. They meet in Rome but then, they are often at the Gallery "Il Milione", in Milan. In 1934 he moves to Paris, where he will stay until his death. He takes masters such as Lèger and Kandinski as his models and paints his most famous pictures. Immediately after the war, Magnelli is regarded together with Kandinski as one of the major European artists. He is much beloved in Italy as well.

His painting is bright and rational, but never still and contemplative. Drawing is complex, an endless conflict of lines. Magnelli never achieves an order. He reminds us that order is always the result of putting in order: balance and organize, as much as possible, the imbalances and contrasts of life.
Magnelli belongs to no school of painting. He is one of those individual artists that have been leading figures of the complex and fascinating art of the 20th century. This is the main feature of the event hosted in Milan and in Sondrio and presenting about 90 paintings - which are exhibited for the first time in Italy after the exhibitions at Zurich Kunsthaus in 1963 and in Avignon in 1988 - and 100 graphic works never exhibited before.

Thanks to Milan Centre Culturel Français for its co-operation in the event.