Enrico Benaglia was born in 1938 in Rome, where he still lives and works. In the 1960s and early 1970s, the originality of his painting brought him into contact with a cultural milieu of poets and actors, including Luciano Luisi, Renato Civello, Claudio Rendina, Mario Lunetta, Nanni Fabbri, Riccardo Cucciolla, Gabriella Sobrino, Umberto Serafini and Guido Ruggiero, all of whom contributed to the development of his distinctive aesthetic approach.

From the 1980s, he gained prominence on the national art scene thanks to his distinctive, symbolic iconography steeped in fairy tales and myths. From the 1990s, the critical acclaim and popular appeal of his work were confirmed by a series of major exhibitions held in Italy and abroad, among which Il salotto incantato (The Enchanted Living Room) at the Castle of L’Aquila in 1998, Stati di instabilità permanente (States of Permanent Instability) at Villa Letizia in Treviso in 2000, Il giardino segreto (The Secret Garden) at the Museo del Vittoriano in Roma in 2002, Geografia delle emozioni (Geography of Emotions) at the Santa Maria della Scala Museum in Siena in 2004, Percorso interiore (Inner Pathway) at the Civic Picture Gallery of Teramo in 2007, Collages-Paintings at the Vitelli Picture Gallery of Città di Castello in 2008, Benaglia’s Circus at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome in 2010 and Splendore mediterraneo (Mediterranean Splendour) at the Catania Chamber of Commerce in 2011.

Some of his most famous pictorial cycles have been exhibited at atypical, but evocative locations such as Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and JFK Airport in New York, as well as in prestigious venues such as the Italian Cultural Institutes in Strasbourg, Madrid and Vienna, and the Embassy of Italy in Tallinn, Estonia.