July 1, 1888
Birth of Alberto Magnelli in Florence, Italy.

Summer 1907
While vacationing in the Tuscan Apennines, Magnelli accompanied an
antiques dealer and painter who had gone off “in search of motifs.” His
friend encouraged Magnelli to imitate him and thus to make his first painting.

1909
Magnelli began to exhibit his work. In June, he participated in the Eighth Venice Biennale.

April 23, 1910
At the International Exhibition of the City of Venice, the landscape he
exhibited was purchased for 1,000 pounds by a Russian collector, Count Theocharides. This was the first picture he sold.

1912
Magnelli befriended members of the avant-garde in Florence, including
the writers Papini and Palazzeschi as well as the painters Soffici and
Severini.

November 30, 1913
Magnelli visited the Futurist painting Exhibition organized by the Lacerba
review in Florence, which aroused his enthusiasm.

March 15, 1914
He went to Paris together with the poet Aldo Palazzeschi. Soffici introduced him to some artists who gravitated around Apollinaire and the
review Les Soirées de Paris, including Picasso, Léger, and Archipenko.

April 10, 1915
The Lacerba review announced that it would organize a second exhibition.
Magnelli was going to participate, but the declaration of war led
to the cancellation of this event.

Summer 1915
Magnelli executed his first abstract paintings.

1916
Figurative elements reappeared in his work, though in highly transposed
fashion.

July 12, 1918
He painted the Lyrical Explosions series, which marked a turning point
in his work.

1919
Following the example of the Valori Plastici group, his work evolved
toward a return to a legible form of figurative painting and a greater classicism.

1921
Magnelli’s opposition to Fascist ideas gradually detached him from
his avant-garde painter-friends.

May 1921
Magnelli’s first one-man show took place at the Galleria Materassi in
Florence.

March 19, 1929
The Pesaro Gallery of Milan presented a one-man show of
Magnelli’s work, with a preface by Enrico Somare. This text constituted
the first major study of the painter.

October 1932
Magnelli left Florence and settled in Paris, where he painted the canvasses
of the Stones series.

December 1933
Magnelli made the acquaintance of Kandinsky through Pierre Loeb, who would become the dealer of both men. Kandinsky had come from Germany to settle in Paris. There, they struck up a friendship.

June 1, 1934
Magnelli’s first one-man show in Paris took place at Pierre Loeb’s
Galerie Pierre.

1936
Magnelli executed his first Collages and painted his first Slates.

April 19, 1937
De Chirico, who had brought some of Magnelli’s gouaches to New
York, established contact with the Nierendorf Gallery. In 1938, this gallery organized Magnelli’s first one-man show in the United States.

June 30, 1939
Magnelli participated in the first Salon des Réalités nouvelles at the
Charpentier Gallery in Paris. His works were shown among those of foreign artists who had explored abstraction before 1920.

October 18, 1939
Along with his future wife Susi Gerson, Magnelli withdrew to the outskirts of Grasse, on the Côte d’Azur. The events of the war forced them to remain there until 1944.

October 1940
Jean Arp and Sophie Taeuber settled in Grasse at the Château-Folie, an estate Magnelli had found for them.

1941
Without the means to paint and unable to find canvasses and paints in Grasse, Magnelli made a series of Music Collages using exercise books lined with musical staffs found at a local shop.

September 1942
Arp and Magnelli decided to create an album of lithographs whose plates would be done by the two of them together, along with Sophie Taeuber and Sonia Delaunay, who had also settled in the area.

March 1944
Magnelli secretly returned to Paris.

November 7, 1947
The René Drouin Gallery presented the first overall exhibition of Magnelli’s work. The show brought together works dating from 1914 to 1947 and was accompanied by a catalogue prefaced by Jean Arp. With this exhibition, Magnelli became, in the eyes of critics, the leader of the new generation, and his influence made its mark on the works of Nicolas de Staël, Vasarely, and members of the Italian and South-American avantgardes.

June 17, 1949
Exhibition at the Denise René Gallery in Paris.

May 16, 1950
The French National Museum of Modern Art in Paris purchased its first Magnelli work, Ronde océanique (1937).

June 8, 1950
The Venice Biennale devoted an entire room to his work. There, he
presented eighteen paintings dating from 1914 to 1948.

October 22, 1951
Magnelli was awarded second prize at the São Paulo Biennial.

November 1954
The first retrospective of Magnelli’s work took place at the Palace of Fine Arts in Brussels, Belgium. The exhibition included one-hundred canvasses from 1914 to 1954. The show was later to be reprised at the Eindhoven Museum in the Netherlands.

August 16, 1955
The Antibes Museum offered a retrospective of Magnelli’s work.

June 4, 1957
The Berggruen Gallery in Paris inaugurated Magnelli’s Collages exhibition.

November 19, 1957
The Galerie de France inaugurated in Paris a one-man show of Magnelli’s paintings.

May 4, 1963
To celebrate Magnelli’s seventy-fifth birthday, a major retrospective of
his works was presented in Switzerland by the Kunsthaus Zürich and then shown at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence.

March 14, 1964
The Folkwang Museum of Essen in Germany presented a retrospective
of Magnelli’s work.

February 28, 1968
The French National Museum of Modern Art in Paris presented a retrospective show of 173 Magnelli works.

September 28, 1970
The Cantini Museum in Marseilles presented a touring show of Magnelli’s work organized by the French National Center of Contemporary Art. This exhibition was then presented in five other French museums.

April 20, 1971
Magnelli died of heart failure in the evening at his home. He was buried in the Meudon Cemetery. According to his wishes, the following inscription appeared on his gravestone: Alberto Magnelli, 1888-1971, pittore fiorentino.

Translated from the French by David Ames Curtis