Campigli was born in Berlin His birth name was Max Ihlenfeld, (his mother’s maiden name). The identity of his father is uncertain. He was taken to Italy when he was a boy when his mother went to live near Florence. She later married an English manufacturer who lived in Milan. The young Max studied journalism there although he was intensely interested in the arts. After military service during World War I, he moved to Paris in 1919 and he worked for nine years there as a journalist for the influential Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera. During this time he began to paint and it was also when he changed his name (Max became Massimo and Ihlenfeld became Campigli (the German feld (field) translates to Campo in Italian). He was self taught as an artist but his marriage in 1927 to a wealthy and beautiful young Rumanian painter Magdalena (‘Dutza’) Radulescu probably had a bearing on his change of direction. He admired the work of artists such as Picasso and Léger and the classical art he saw in the Louvre. In 1928, when he saw the Etruscan collection at the Villa Giulia in Rome, he was profoundly affected by ancient art, including Cretan and Roman and from then on his palette and style of painting was determined. His central motif became the depiction of women going about their various activities, weaving at a loom, sitting in a café, walking in the street. In 1929 he, with Severini, de Chirico and other Italian artists living and working in Paris formed the group Sette Italiani di Parigi (Seven Italians of Paris). In the same year he held his first one-man exhibition in Paris, at the Galérie Jeanne Bucher, which was met with acclaim. He moved back to Milan and in 1935 visited New York, exhibiting there with great success. By 1939, when he and Dutza were divorced, he had become a leading figure in the world of modern art.

After 1949 Campigli divided his time among Paris, Milan, Rome and St Tropez. His first one-man exhibition in a museum was held at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1946 and he participated in the Venice Biennale in 1948, 1958, 1960 and 1962. Among his many one-man shows were at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, and the Kunsthalle, Bern, in 1955, and the Palazzo Reale, Milan, in 1967. Campigli illustrated numerous books, including Marco Polo’s Il Milione, 1942, and André Gide’s Theseus, 1948, and wrote several texts of an autobiographical-critical nature. Campigli died at his home in St. Tropez. Most important public collections world-wide have works by him.

All Massimo Campigli images are Copyright N. Campigli