Afro (1912-1976)

Aliases: Afro Basaldella

Professions: Painter

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  - Afro , 1912-1976 Segno limite olio su tela

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Afro Biography

(b Udine, 4 March 1912; d Zurich, 24 July 1976). Italian painter. He was the brother of MIRKO. He learnt to paint in the workshop belonging to his father and uncle, both of whom were painter–decorators. From 1926 to 1931 he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, with his brother Dino Basaldella (b 1909) and then in Venice. In 1932 he was in Milan, where he met Renato Birolli and Ennio Morlotti, and where an exhibition of his work was held the following year at the Galleria Il Milione. From 1933 he was in Rome working with such artists of the Scuola Romana as Corrado Cagli, whose influence is apparent in Afro’s early figure-paintings and still-lifes, Fausto Pirandello, Giuseppe Capogrossi and Mirko. The artists were based in the Galleria della Cometa, where Afro exhibited in 1937. They opposed the classicism of Novecento Italiano, combining instead primitivism and metaphysical naturalism with expressionistic brushwork. During World War II Afro taught mosaic design at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice. After the war, between his participation in the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti (1946) and in the group of Otto Pittori Italiani (1952–4) his work was characterized by a tonal post-Cubist style. He held exhibitions in Rome at the Galleria Lo Zodiaco in 1946, at the Galleria dell’Obelisco in 1948 and at the Studio d’Arte Palma in 1951. Gradually he developed a style of lyrical abstraction that delicately balanced the expression of subconscious impulses with an objective vision, for example in Still-life (1948) and Burnt Shadow (1956; both Rome, G.N.A. Mod.). From 1949 he made numerous visits to the USA: he exhibited in New York and taught at Mills College in Oakland, CA. He also became acquainted with the Abstract Expressionism of Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning and especially Arshile Gorky, whose work he introduced in Rome in 1957 at the Galleria dell’Obelisco. He had one-man shows at the Venice Biennale in 1954, 1956 and 1960, and also participated in the New Decade exhibition (1955) at MOMA, New York, and the Documenta exhibition at Kassel. During the 1950s he received numerous public commissions for murals in Udine and, in 1958, in the UNESCO building in Paris (the Garden of Hope). During the 1960s his painting became more gestural and highly coloured, and he also employed collage. In the 1970s, however, he used crisper geometric forms.

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