Mario Radice (1898-1987)

Professions: Figure painter; Portrait painter; Painter; Sculptor

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  MARIO RADICE

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  Mario Radice (1900-1997)

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  - Mario Radice , 1900-1987 R.S.M.B.R. olio su tela

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  MARIO RADICE

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Mario Radice Biography

(b Como, 1 Aug 1898). Italian painter and sculptor. He studied painting at the Scuole Techniche in Como, where he met Manlio Rho and Giuseppe Terragni. Military service took him to Vienna, Paris and Warsaw (1918–20) and, after abandoning veterinary studies, he was employed by a paper manufacturer (1924–30) and went to Buenos Aires. Radice exhibited severe academic works in Como (e.g. Portrait of the Artist’s Wife , 1928–30; priv. col., see 1985 exh. cat., fig. 2), painting full-time only from 1930. Over the next two years he visited Cologne and Paris, where the example of Fernand Léger, Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian led to his conversion to geometric abstraction. By 1932 Radice, Rho and Carla Badiali (b 1907), together with the Rationalist architects Terragni, Pietro Lingeri and Cesare Cattaneo (1912–43), constituted the Gruppo di Como. The painters’ pure forms evoked Classical order and proportion, as well as organic systems in nature. Radice, Terragni and Lingeri formed Quadrante with the painter–dealer Gino Ghiringhelli (1898–1964) to promote Rationalism. Although Massimo Bontempelli and Pietro Maria Bardi, editors of the related periodical Quadrante (1933–4), were ambivalent towards abstraction, collaborations with architects were secured. In 1933 Radice began producing purely rectilinear frescoes (e.g. Composition C.F.O. 33 , 1933; priv. col.) and reliefs for Terragni’s Casa del Fascio in Como (1932–6; now Casa del Popolo). In the following year he and Cattaneo began the Camerlata Fountain (1934–5; Como, Piazzale Camerlata; temporarily erected for the 6th Triennale, Milan, in 1936; reconstructed in Como, 1960), remarkable for its pile of four massive rings balanced on four intervening spheres and cantilevered horizontally over the public paths.

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