A leading exponent of the Italian abstract movement, Manlio Rho was born in Como in 1901 and died in his hometown in 1957.

Rho initially began his career as a figurative painter, but exposure to artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich, key proponents of European abstraction, caused the young painter to redirect his attentions towards abstract works. A pivotal moment for Rho and for the Italian avant-garde, came in the early 1930s when, together with architect Giuseppe Terragni and painter Mario Radice, Rho founded the astrattisti comaschi (Como Abstractionists), a group of artists that gave shape to the abstract movement in Italy. 

Rho's works were characterised by a fusion of strict geometric shapes - drawing upon the style of Russian suprematism - but realised in colours inspired by northern Italian culture, using a warm palette of reds, greens and browns. His first major exhibition was staged in 1935, in the Milanese gallery Il Milione, and his works have been shown at nine separate Venice Biennales. 

His works are held in collections of numerous modern art museums, including in Milan, Trieste and Rome. Due to a short career caused by his untimely death at the age of just fifty-six, and the fact that many of his works are in public collections, Rho's works are highly sought after on the art market as a result of their scarcity.