Mauro Reggiani

(b Non?ntola, nr Modena, 11 Aug 1897; d Milan, 20 May 1980). Italian painter. He studied at the Regio Istituto di Belle Arti in Modena (1914-20) and at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence (1920-22) but settled in Milan in 1924, joining the circle of Piero Marussig and Achille Funi. After studying the work of C?zanne in Paris (1926), he concentrated on semi-rural subjects (e.g. Beach in the Morning, 1927; Milan, Castello Sforzesco) related to the strapaese tendency of the period, and participated in the second Novecento italiano exhibition in 1929 (Milan, Pal. Permanente). Reggiani discovered the abstract work of Hans Arp and the De Stijl painters on a second trip to Paris in 1930 and consequently explored Cubist structures in such works as Composition No. 8 (1933; priv. col., see Caramel, p. 61). This transformation coincided with the opening of the Galleria del Milione in Milan in November 1930, where he met Oreste Bogliardi (1900-68) and the gallery's owner Gino Ghiringhelli (1898-1964). During a two-year abstention from exhibiting (1932-4) they developed a viable geometric abstraction, close to that of Atanasio Soldati and the Como painters Mario Radice and Manlio Rho.

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