Corrado Cagli, Transatlantic bridges, 1938-1947

Description

In the 1930s, the painter Corrado Cagli was a rising star of the Scuola Romana, championed by the Fascist regime despite being both Jewish and homosexual. With the passage of Italy’s Racial Laws, he fled first to Paris and then to the U.S., where he remained until 1947. Raffaele Bedarida’s Corrado Cagli, Transatlantic bridges, 1938-1947 examines this critical period of Cagli’s exile.

Placing Cagli within the broader wave of artistic migration to the U.S., Bedarida explores his complex identity as an artist once favored by Fascism, his role in cultural diplomacy, and the ideological ostracism he faced upon returning to postwar Italy. Blending biography, cultural history, and critical analysis, the book offers new insights into an artist whose work defies classification, contributing to the growing scholarship on émigré artists and the role of the U.S. as a refuge for European intellectuals fleeing Nazi-Fascism.

About the Author

Raffaele Bedarida is an art historian and curator specializing in twentieth-century Italian art and politics. His research focuses on cultural diplomacy, migration, and cultural exchange between Italy and the United States. He is Assistant Professor of Art History at Cooper Union and regularly lectures on modern and contemporary art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and MoMA.