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Max Hilenfeld (later Massimo Campigli) was born in 1895 to an eighteen year old single mother who calls herself aunt, making little Max believe that he is the son of the woman who is actually his grandmother. He accidentally discovers the deception at the age of fifteen and this leaves such a strong mark on him as to influence his artistic vision of the female figure. He works for Corriere della Sera, frequents the Milanese futurist environment and meets Umberto Boccioni and Carlo Carrà. Under the pseudonym of Massimo Campigli, he publishes the essay "Words in freedom", which he himself defined, years later, a "futurist nonsense". At the outbreak of the First World War, he was sent to the front where he was taken prisoner in a fortress in Vienna from which he escaped a year later. He is summarized by the Courier and sent to Paris as a correspondent. In France he became passionate about painting, thus combining his activity as a journalist with that of a painter. He turns out to be an excellent artist, so much so that he sells many paintings to the well-known art dealer Leon Rosenberg, leaves the Corriere and devotes himself entirely to painting. He forms the group The Seven of Paris, also known as the “Italiens de Paris”, with De Chirico, Tozzi, Severini, De Pisis, Paresce and Savinio. On the occasion of a trip to Rome, he visits Villa Giulia and here he is struck by Etruscan art. Thus his way of painting changes: he approaches the fresco technique, few colors and geometrized figures. Frescoes the Palazzo di Giustizia in Milan and the University of Padua. He exhibits at the Venice Biennale, the Barbaroux gallery, the Milione gallery in Milan and the Stadelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Then at the Galerie de France in Paris, at the Moma in New York, at the Tate gallery in London.