Corrado Cagli: Transatlantic Bridges: 1938-1948

Please join the Center for Modern Italian art and Centro Primo Levi for the inauguration of the exhibition of Corrado Cagli curated by Raffaele Bedarida and the presentation of CPL Editions’ new volume  Corrado Cagli: Transatlantic Bridges: 1938-1947.

In the 1930s, the young Italian artist Corrado Cagli was a rising star of the Scuola Romana, supported by the Fascist regime despite being Jewish and openly gay. Following the Racial Laws, he fled to the USA, where he remained until 1947. In this book, Raffaele Bedarida focuses on Cagli’s American exile.

While examining Cagli in the context of the artistic and intellectual migration from Europe to the US, Bedarida provides new insight into the specific plight of this Italian Jewish artist and the challenges of doing art across national boundaries: between cultural diplomacy and negotiation of identity.

The author combines biography, cultural history, and critical analysis in exploring a decisive period in the life and work of a painter whose complex personality and multifaceted work defy classifications. The book also provides thought-provoking, nuanced arguments on the ideologically based ostracism Cagli encountered upon returning to Italy. Because of his past as a regime-endorsed artist, his recent American success, and his participation in the liberation of Europe from Fascism with the U.S. army, Cagli did not fit into any of the factions of Italy’s post-war heated cultural disputes. Based on extensive original research and written with brio, Bedarida’s book is an essential contribution to the growing field of transnational modernism studies.

Image: Corrado Cagli, Manhattan from the Wellington, 1940