Ardengo Soffici

Ardengo Soffici (April 7, 1879 – August 19, 1964) was an Italian writer, painter, poet, sculptor and intellectual. He studied in Florence at the Accademia from 1897 and later at the Scuola Libera del Nudo of the academy. In 1900, he moved from Florence to Paris, where he lived for seven years and worked for Symbolist journals. While in Paris, during his time at the Bateau-Lavoir he became acquainted with Braque, Derain, Picasso, Juan Gris and Apollinaire. On returning to Italy in 1907, Soffici settled in Poggio a Caiano in the countryside near Florence where he lived for the rest of his life and wrote articles on modern artists for the first issue of the political and cultural magazine La Voce. Soffici published "Theory of the movement of plastic Futurism" in Lacerba, accepting that Futurism had reconciled what had previously seemed irreconcilable, Impressionism and Cubism.