Giuseppe Capogrossi was born on March 7, 1900, in Rome. After finishing law studies in 1922, Capogrossi went to Paris in 1927, where he visited studios and academies and made himself familiar with the current direction and trends of art.
Giuseppe Capogrossi was especially influenced by Picasso, Modigliani, and Renoir. In 1937, he left Paris and went to work in Umbria as a painter, dedicating his works to motives from the rural, agrarian life of the area. Back in Rome, Capogrossi taught at the Liceo Artistico. While traveling for his studies in Austria, he came in contact with the works of Klimt and the Vienna Secession. Together with Alberto Burri, Mario Balloco, and Ettore Colla, Giuseppe Capogrossi founded the group "Origine" in 1949 and turned towards Neocubism in his own artistic works. Slowly, Capogrossi's paintings lost even the semblence of figures and, by the 1950's, he was producing exclusively abstract works. He also created his own picture language made up of horizontal, oval, and ellipsoid forms. In 1955 and 1959, Giuseppe Capogrossi took part in the documenta in Kassel. He was appointed as lecturer at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples in 1966.
On October 9, 1972, Giuseppe Capogrossi died in his hometown of Rome.