Alfredo Volpi was an Italian-born Brazilian artist of the twentieth century. He represented the Second Generation of Brazilian modernist painters and was one of the participants of the Santa Helena Group.
Beginning from oil landscapes, he then adopted a geometric style consisting of brightly colored unusual abstract shapes and flag patterns.
Background
Alfredo Volpi was born on April 14, 1896, in Lucca, Tuscany, Italy. He was a son of Ludovico and Giuseppina Volpi. A year after his birth, the family relocated to São Paulo, Brazil where Alfredo spent the most part of his life.
Although raised in a working class area, the boy became fascinated by art at an early age. He created his first painting which was naturalist at the age of twelve.
Education
Alfredo Volpi studied at the Professional Male School of Brás in Sao Paulo.
As to an artistic training, he was an autodidact. A teenager, he developped his skills working as carpenter, carver and bookbinder.
Career
The start of Alfredo Volpi’s career can be counted from 1911 when he began to support himself as a decorator. He painted murals and panels on the walls of the big residences in São Paulo. The same time, Volpi created his first paintings on wood and canvas. His privileged genres were portraits and landscapes on which he depicted his neighborhood and the surrounding area. Due to the artist’s attention to light and colors the works were similar to those of expressionists. In 1925, Volpi participated in the group exhibition at the Palácio das Indústrias in São Paulo.
During the following decade, the artist joined the newly formed Santa Helena Group. He participated at its painting sessions in the outskirts of the city as well as at its life model sessions. In 1936, Volpi presented his canvases at the Group exhibition. At the end of the 1930s, influenced by the painter Ernesto de Fiori, Alfredo Volpi shifted from realism to the style of geometric abstraction which later became his trademark. The debut solo show of the artist took place at the Itá Gallery of São Paulo in 1944.
The end of the decade marked the change in Volpi’s art. The main subjects of his canvases became brightly colored houses foresides and the small traditional flags called ‘bandeirinhas’. The elaborated composition of the paintings and their saturated color palette consolidated Volpi’s status of one of the influential artists of Brazilian art.
Alfredo Volpi participated in the first two São Paulo Art Biennials in 1951 and 1953. At the end of the decade, the artist made frescoes for the Chapel of Our Lady of Fátima in Barreiros and created some canvases on religious themes. He demonstrated his artworks at the shows in New York City and Tokyo. In 1964, Volpi exhibited at Venice Biennale.
To celebrate the 80th birthday of the artist in 1986, the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art held a retrospective of 193 Volpi’s works.
Quotations:
"I always painted what I felt, my painting was gradually transforming, it started with nature, then it slowly got out, sometimes continuing, I never think about what I am doing, I think only about the problem of the line, of the shape of colour. Nothing else."
Membership
Santa Helena Group
,
Brazil
National Union of Plastic Artists
,
Brazil
Interests
Pre-Renaissance painting
Artists
Ernesto de Fiori
Connections
Alfredo Volpi married Benedita da Conceição in 1942. The couple had a daughter named Eugenia Maria.