Agenore Fabbri

In 1932 Fabbri, in order to continue his education at the Accademia di Belle Arti, moved to Florence where he frequented the artists' Caffè Giubbe Rosse, meeting point for the intellectuals known as the Ermetici Group (Eugenio Montale, Carlo Bo, etc.)

In the early 40s, Fabbri made his debut with his first solo exhibitions at the Gian Ferrari Gallery, Milan (1940) and then in Bergamo and Savona but shortly World War II and military service interrupted his career and he was sent to Yugoslavia and Greece.

In the years after the War, Albisola again became a centre for art of international importance where Marino Marini, Giacomo Manzù, Aligi Sassu and Karel Appel, Guillaume Corneille and Asger Jorn from the COBRA Group, as well as Roberto Matta and Wifredo Lam worked.

In 1984, the Spanish poet Rafael Alberti, who had been a friend of Fabbri's for many years, wrote forty poems about his work; at the same time, a book and a documentary film featuring both artists was produced while in 1991, as a designer for Tecno Milan, he created a bench that is still widely distributed in Europe and America.

At his beginnings, in the 30s and the 40s Fabbri worked mainly with ceramic and terracotta, developing progressively new solutions such as riflessatura (reflection), while in the following two decades bronze and wood became the materials of choice: the first one is characterized by a convulsive modelling and deep cuts in the figure while the second one is marked by ruptures and cracks of the surfaces.