Cassinari was born in
Piacenza, a city in Italy’s Emilia Romagna region. He attended the local art school but eventually decided to move to Milan, where he studied painting at the
Brera Academy under
Aldo Carpi. In 1946, he helped find the
Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, an association aiming to restore optimism to post-war Italian art. Other members were
Renato Birolli,
Renato Guttuso,
Ennio Morlotti,
Leoncillo Leonardi, and
Alberto Viani. In 1949, Cassinari was invited by
Pablo Picasso to exhibit his work at the Antibes Museum of Art. In 1952, he won the Grand Prize for Painting at the 26th
Venice Biennale with his Cubist-inspired paintings,
The Lemon and
Still Life in Pink. In the 1960s, Cassinari briefly relocated to Venice. In 1986, he was recognised for his contributions to Italian painting with a large-scale retrospective of his work in Milan. Cassinari died in Milan on 26 March 1992, about one year after the death of his wife, Enrica. ==References==