Alberti is considered one of Spain's major poets of the twentieth century. Born in Cadiz, Spain, in 1902, he began his career as a painter, exhibiting his own work in Madrid before he was twenty. In 1923 he turned to reading and writing poetry and published his first volume, Marinero en tierra, a book of lyrics evoking lost childhood, in 1924. His poetry remained controversial until 1927, when he wrote Cal y canto (Quicklime and Song), poems dominated by intricate and incongruous images. In 1929 he published the volume considered his most important, Sobre los angeles (Concerning the Angels), a surrealist work dealing with the good and bad angels inhabiting modern shattered psyches.
In the 1930's Alberti was becoming active politically, founding a Communist newspaper, Octubre, in 1934. His poetry during the 1930s became more political than aesthetic, as for example in El poeta en la calle. After fighting on the side of the republic during the Spanish Civil War, he was forced to flee Spain. He went to Argentina where he worked in a publishing house and resumed his interest in painting and writing. There he published his autobiography, La Arboleda Perdida (The Lost Grove) in 1942. Alberti later moved to Italy.
In 1977, Alberti returned to Spain. He died in Madrid at the age of 96.
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