Cesare Maggi

Cesare Maggi was born on January 13, 1881 in Rome, into a family of actors. Maggi embarked on classical studies at the request of his father but also very early on in painting, first with the Livornese artist Vittorio Matteo Corcos in 1897, then with Gaetano Esposito in Naples. His debut in Florence at the Esposizione Annuale della Società di Belle Arti di Firenze, in 1898, was followed by a short trip to Paris to keep abreast of the latest developments.

The decisive turning point in Maggi's art took place in 1889 with the posthumous exhibition of Giovanni Segantini organized by the Milanese Society of Fine Arts, which encouraged him to move definitively to landscape painting of a divisionist nature. After a short stay in Engadine, he returned to Milan before settling permanently in Turin.

The commercial collaboration with Alberto Grubicy until 1913 allowed Maggi to quickly establish himself as one of the main representatives of the second generation of divisionist painters in Italy. He painted a repertoire of easily comprehensible mountain landscapes, focusing primarily on the visual perception aspects of reflecting light and color, but without the deep spirituality of Segantini's work.

He participated in major Italian and European exhibitions and the Venice Biennale dedicated an entire room to his work at the Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte in Venice in 1912. After an interlude devoted to portrait painting in the same decade, the The artist's mature work focuses on a greater simplification of subject matter, primarily in landscapes. Maggi obtained the chair of painting at the Albertina Academy in Turin in 1936.

Cesare Maggi died in 1961 in Turin.