The State Hermitage Museum: Hermitage News

Afro Basaldella. The Color of Emotion

On 19 May 2009, in the Winter Palace (rooms 339-342) opened the exhibition Afro Basaldella. The Color of Emotion that will for the first time in Russia present the artwork of an artist whose canvases help track the evolution of pictorial means and coloration of the post-war Italian paintings.

The exposition that includes 56 paintings created from 1935 till 1975 reflects the main stages of the artist’s career and reveals the "festive glorification of light and life" typical of Afro’s work (quoted from the 1960 monograph on painting by James J. Sweeney, at that time the director of the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York).

The greatest Italian abstractionist Afro Basaldella (1912-1976) known simply as Afro (the artists signed his works only with his first name) was born in the town of Udine not far from Venice. His first monographic exhibition was held in Milan when he was only twenty. Since 1935 Afro was a regular exhibition participant at Quadriennale in Rome and Biennale in Venice.

The early works of the Italian artist created by him in the 1930’s and the first half of the 1940's follow the figurative tradition. In 1937 in Paris Basaldella got acquainted with cubism, which was his first step to non-figurative art.

In 1950 he moved to America. During this stage Afro abandoned figurative art, albeit not immediately. In his paintings of the mid-1950's the lines are getting less definite and dabs more vague.

At the Venetian Biennale of 1952 Afro had a joint exhibition with the Group of Eight organised with the support from art critic Lionello Venturi. This helped him to re-establish relations with his fellow countrymen Pizzinato, Birolly, Santomaso, Turcato, Vedova, the other representatives of abstract and "concrete" painting.

At the Venetian Biennale of 1956 Afro was named "The Best Painter of Italy". The next two decades he had numerous exhibitions, taught in American and in Italy. In 1958, together with Pablo Picasso, Hans Arp, Alexander Calder, and Huan Miro, he was invited to paint murals in the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

In the 1970's Afro turned to pictorialism again. In his works of that time, similar to those of Picasso and Miro, bright dabs became more distinct, turning into certain organic forms. During these years the artist, already being seriously ill, almost completely stopped painting and turned to prints and tapestries. In 1973 Afro moved to Zurich where he died three years later. In 1978 the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Rome held a large monographic exhibition of his works, thus recognising him as one of the greatest Italian post-war artists.

The exhibition is organised by the State Hermitage in association with Il Cigno Galileo Galilei publishing house (Rome), Afro Archive (Rome), National gallery of Contemporary Art (Rome), under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Italy, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Italy, the Italian Culture Institute (St. Petersburg), and the Consulate General of the Republic of Italy in St. Petersburg.

The exhibition curator is Natalia Demina, junior researcher of the Department of Western European Art of the State Hermitage.

Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage, at the opening of the exhibition

Giorgio Mattioli, Cultural Attache of the Italian Culture Institute in St. Petersburg

At the ceremony of the opening

Tapestries by Afro Basaldella

Booklet of the exhibition

Catalogue of the exhibition