Born in Venice and raised in Florence, Bruno Capacci settled in Paris in 1930, joining Les Italiens de Paris with de Giorgio de Chirico and Gino Severini.
He and his wife, Belgian painter Suzanne Van Damme, were closely connected with the Surrealists and exhibited at André Breton’s Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme at Galerie Maeght in 1947.
Capacci’s work - poetic, imaginative, and often featuring fantastical bestiaries - drew on Renaissance masters as well as Paul Klee and Victor Brauner. In Florence he developed ceramics, mosaics and porcelain, exhibiting widely in the US and collaborating with Haviland, Christofle and Rosenthal. He returned to Brussels in later life and died in 1996.
Suzanne Van Damme shared Capacci’s Parisian Surrealist milieu and exhibited internationally alongside him. Her work, admired for its lyrical sensitivity and dreamlike qualities, was celebrated posthumously in solo and joint exhibitions with Capacci.
