Background
Mr. Corpora was born in Tunis, Tunisia, on August 15, 1909.
Antonio Corpora working in his studio.
Mr. Corpora was born in Tunis, Tunisia, on August 15, 1909.
Antonio Corpora attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts, where he was a pupil of Gustave Moreau. In 1929 he settled in Florence and attended Felice Carena's lessons at the Academy of Fine Arts.
In 1931 Mr. Corpora settled in Paris, where he met Alberto Giacometti and Sergio Signori. Corpora often returned to Italy and Tunisia, where he co-founded the 'Les quatres' group in 1934. Good contacts to well-known Italian artists, including the group associated with the Galleria del Milione in Milan, enabled him to publish some of his writings. In the 1930s Antonio Corpora painted in an abstract style notable for geometric forms and strips of colour. Late in the 1930s he briefly held a chair in stage design in Bologna but left Italy during the second world war to live in Tunis.
Antonio Corpora has also been active as a writer and art critic. He collaborated in the 1930s and 1940s with magazines such as "Quadrante", by Bontempelli , and "La Fiera Letteraria". He published some stories, such as "The legend of Masino Girgenti" (1937) and "Amazonda" (1944, with notes by Carlo Belli) and the collection of lyrics "Alta è la luce" (1942, with the introduction by Jean Amrouche who edited also the French translation).
On his return to Italy in 1945, Antonio Corpora joined forces with Guttuso, Fazzini et al to found the 'Neo-cubista' group. The pictures he produced at that time were under the sway of Braque and Matisse. In 1947 Corpora became a member of the 'Fronte Nuovo delle Arti', which was notable for its social commitment. Late in the 1940s he began to reject Cubist formulae, adopting instead a freer formal idiom that by the 1950s had become Abstract Expressionism.
The work Corpora did in the 1960s can be classified as Informel yet he did not abandon geometric forms entirely until the early 1970s. From 1975 Antonio Corpora worked with a dripping technique on canvases roughened with plaster of Paris and sand, which he coated with vibrant colour. In the 1990s he continued to experiment but ultimately returned to compositions with strips of colour.
Velieri nel porto
Il mare dei Caraibi
Composition with Sails
Untitled
Untitled
Il vento blu
Autunno
Untitled
Uno spazio nuovo
Il Vicino Pianeta
Un Altar Imagine (Corrida)
Afternoon
Tramonto
The Beautiful Morning
Mare ai Faraglioni
Il torneo a Valencia
Molto lontano
Arrivo a Venezia
Still Life at the Sea
Laguna e deserto
Musicalità dell'aurora
Alba/Dawn
Geroglifico
Le forze segrete
The Big Fish
Carnival in Venice
Viaggio nel nord
L'isola del tesoro
Arcobaleno
Omaggio a Monet
Due Tempi
L’avvenimento
Antonio Corpora was made a member of the San Luca Academy in 2003.