Enrico Benaglia

Painter, draftsman, engraver, lithographer, designer, sculptor, Enrico Benaglia was born in 1938 in Rome, where he still lives and works. While he was a teenager he attended, for professional reasons, Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome and the studies of some leading figures of the twentieth century: Fazzini, Omiccioli, Gentilini and Montanarini. Around the end of the 60’s, he was encouraged by the esteem and friendship of important painters and art critics such as Vittorio Guzzi, Giovanni Domenico Purificato and Giovanni Stradone, Benaglia exhibited at the Galleria La Vetrata in Rome (1969) a series of paintings in witch he was already establishing the originality of its aesthetic and poetic.

Outside of the principal conceptual “artistic poles” of the 60’s and early 70’s, thanks to the authenticity of his paintings, Benaglia got in touch with a cultural world of poets and actors, such as Luciano Luisi, Renato Civello, Claudio Rendina, Mario Lunetta , Walter Maestosi, Biagio Proietti, Nanni Fabbri, Riccardo Cucciolla, Gabriella Sobrino, Umberto Serafini, Laura Gianoli, Guido Ruggiero. This background contributed to the further development and shaping of his poetical world.

His work as a scenographer began in 1978 with the comedy of Lucio Piccolo, “Lettere di Gozzano”, directed by Giacomo Colli, for RAI. In 1986, he designed the sets and costumes for the stage adaptation of “The Diary” by Alice James, directed by Nanni Fabbri and the theatrical play “Pigeons” by Alida Maria Sessa, directed by Riccardo Cucciolla.

During the 80’s, Benaglia is placed permanently in the national art scene through the identification of original iconography and symbolism, linked to the world fables and mythology. In 1985 it was published a first organic volume on his work for the publishing house “Fratelli Laterza”, with a text by Alberico Sala

The Artist is on the display in Besharat Gallery Barbizon, France.