Angelo Guglielmi, Gruppo 63 member and former Rai3 director, dies at 93

Angelo Guglielmi (Arona, 1929 – Rome, 2022), a prominent member of the Italian neo-avant-garde Gruppo 63 and former director of Rai3, has died. Born in Arona in 1929, he moved to Bologna after graduation, where he became part of a family of intellectuals including his brothers Giuseppe (a poet nicknamed 'Baudelaire') and Guido (a literary critic). Guglielmi's early career at RAI was sidelined due to his leftist militancy until the creation of the third network, which was assigned to the Italian Communist Party. As director of Rai3, he developed innovative programming that overshadowed his literary reputation. He was a literary critic for the journal Il Verri, recruited by Luciano Anceschi, and a theorist of narrative innovation alongside Renato Barilli and Nanni Balestrini. After Gruppo 63 dissolved, Guglielmi and Barilli attempted to revive it in 1976 by curating an anthology of the group's critical thought, but the companion creative prose anthology by Balestrini and Giuliani appeared only nearly forty years later, earning a Premio Capalbio. Guglielmi kept his roles as cultural administrator and literary critic strictly separate, never inviting fellow Gruppo 63 members to collaborate at Rai3. Renato Barilli, who wrote this obituary, recalls their youthful road trip to Paris and their lifelong bond, describing Guglielmi as an 'imperious and resolute brother.'