Gallery: FOUNDATION
Country: ITALY
City: ROME
Website:
https://afrobasaldella.org/
Abstract:
Afro Basaldella (Udine, 4 March 1912 – Zurich, 24 July 1976) was a crucial figure for understanding the
relationship between Italian painting and the context of international contemporary art. Already in 1950, in fact,
Afro was in New York to collaborate, thanks to the intercession of his friend Corrado Cagli, with the
Catherine Viviano Gallery, moving from neocubist to abstract painting thanks to that
at his encounter, in the United States, with American Abstract Expressionism, from which he learned automatisms
linked to the gestures of painting. But Afro's painting remained significantly European because it was defined
as an expression of 'abstract lyricism', a vague memory of the image persisted, never described,
but always evoked; often in the suggestive titles that the artist gave to his works. At the beginning involved by
luminous and tonal values, obtained through virtuosic glazes (Ombra burnt), over the years
Sixty Afro accentuates the gestural component (The castle), to arrive, over the course of the decade
later, to the final results of his painting in works such as the Great Ocher, where the different shades are
enclosed in clear backgrounds, as if they were inlays. A re-appropriation of the constructivist instance where the
gesture, which had previously been liberating, now becomes restrained and controlled.
