Carmine Benincasa
Carmine Benincasa (17 December 1947 – 3 August 2020) was an Italian art critic and art historian professor. Biography. Benincasa was born in Eboli in the south of Italy. After studying in a religious school he moved to Rome to study theology, philosophy and law. He was a professor of art history at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Macerata, the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and Professor of History of Art at the Faculty of Architecture of the University La Sapienza in Rome. During this period he met intellectuals like Jean-Paul Sartre, Jorge Luis Borges, Marguerite  Yourcenar, Bruno Zevi and many more. From 1978 to 1982 he was a member of the Venice Biennale Visual Arts Committee and an advisor to the Ministry of Culture and Environment. In 1994 he was briefly accused and incarcerated for defrauding collectors by validating and selling false artworks. The case was subsequently thrown out of court for lack of evidence. Benincasa was eventually cleared of every wrongdoing by the Supreme Court of Italy in 2014. Benincasa published numerous essays, articles and monographs on artists such as Paul Klee, Antoni Tàpies, Renato Guttuso, Henry Moore, Mario Ceroli, Willem de Kooning, Joan  Miró, Amedeo Modigliani, Giacomo Balla, Wassily Kandinsky, Henri Matisse and Giorgio Morandi. He also organized many international exhibitions, including a section of the Venice Biennale in 1982. Benincasa was chief editor of the Italian edition of "Cahiers d'Art". He died on 3 August 2020, aged 72.