Alfredo Volpi (April 14, 1896 – May 28, 1988), was a prominent painter of the artistic and cultural

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

ian

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

movement. He was born in

Lucca Città di Lucca ( ; ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the Serchio River, in a fertile plain near the Ligurian Sea. The city has a population of about 89,000, while its Province of Lucca, province has a population of 383,9 ...

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

but, less than two years later, he was brought by his parents to

São Paulo São Paulo (; ; Portuguese for 'Paul the Apostle, Saint Paul') is the capital of the São Paulo (state), state of São Paulo, as well as the List of cities in Brazil by population, most populous city in Brazil, the List of largest cities in the ...

, became a Brazilian citizen, and lived there for the majority of his life. He was one of the most important artists of the so-called Grupo Santa Helena, formed in the 1930s with Francisco Rebolo, Clóvis Graciano, Mario Zanini, Fulvio Pennacchi, and others.

Early period

Volpi was a self-taught painter, producing his first

naturalist Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...

painting in 1914 at the age of twelve. Although his first paintings could resemble, in some way, those of

expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

artists, (an early influence was the Brazilian landscape painter Ernesto de Fiori). ''Mogi das Cruzes'', a landscape painted for a patron in 1939, is a representative work of this period. He soon focused into a most peculiar style, using geometric abstract forms and switching from oil paint to

tempera Tempera (), also known as egg tempera, is a permanent, fast-drying painting medium consisting of pigments mixed with a water-soluble binder medium, usually glutinous material such as egg yolk. ''Tempera'' also refers to the paintings done in ...

. Volpi's first one-man exhibition was held at the Itá Gallery in São Paulo in 1944.

Later career

Volpi started painting façades of houses in a highly stylized and colorful manner (these paintings were later named the "historical façades" by art critics) and this recurrent theme became pervasive all through the 1950s, after a brief "concretist" period (even though the artist himself never acknowledged being part of the concretist movement as such). The 1960s witnessed the development of his trademark "bandeirinhas" (small flags) for which Volpi became famous and which originated from Brazilian folklore (small flags are a regular fixture of the popular

festa junina ''Festas Juninas'' (; "June Festivals/Festivities"), also known as ''festas de São João'' ("Saint John's Day") for their part in celebrating the nativity of St. John the Baptist (June 24), are the annual Brazilian celebrations adapted from E ...

, held every year during the month of June): the artist would use the small-flag pattern to show an increasing sense of color combination and balanced composition which would eventually place him among the major Brazilian artists of his time. The painter gained national renown with his participation at the second

São Paulo Art Biennial The São Paulo Art Biennial ( Portuguese: ''Bienal de São Paulo'') was founded in 1951 and has been held every two years since. It is the second oldest art biennial in the world after the Venice Biennale (in existence since 1895), which serves as ...

, winning the Grand Prix for Brazilian painting, an award he shared with Di Cavalcanti. Di Cavalcanti publicly dismissed Volpi's art as being that of a "flag painter". Soon he became known as one of the most important 20th century painters in Brazil. Recent exhibitions (MAM São Paulo 2006, Curitiba 2007) have shown how Volpi, far from being the isolated self-made artist he was once thought to be, actually absorbed various influences during his career, especially that of

Josef Albers Josef Albers ( , , ; March 19, 1888March 25, 1976) was a German-born American artist and Visual arts education, educator who is considered one of the most influential 20th-century art teachers in the United States. Born in 1888 in Bottrop, Westp ...

. His use of the ancient tempera technique also shows a knowledge of the Italian Renaissance painters.

Selected works

*Mogi das Cruzes (1939) *Seaside (1940) *Frescoes for the Chapel of Our Lady of Fátima (1958) *Frescoes for Palácio dos Arcos, Brasília (1966) *Bandeirinhas (1950) *Panel of church of Cristo Operário (1951) *Night Façade (1955) * , 1964 *Kinetic Composition (1970) *The Discovery of America

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Volpi, Alfredo 1896 births 1988 deaths Brazilian modern artists Italian emigrants to Brazil 20th-century Brazilian painters 20th-century Brazilian male artists Grand Officers of the Order of Ipiranga

Early period

Later career

Selected works

See also

References

External links