Afro Libio Basaldella

Afro Libio Basaldella is considered today as one of the most important examplars of Italian abstraction. Born in Udine in 1912, in a family of painters and interior designers, he studied in Venice and Florence, before frequenting Arturo Martini’s studio in Milan. After many trips to Rome, the first of which was made possible by a grant from the Marangoni Foundation in Udine, he settled there in 1935.

In the capital city, he worked with young artists from the « School of Rome ». During World War II, his expression became more dramatic and fragmented: the war deeply influenced post-cubist experiences in Italy.

He started exploring abstraction and in 1952 he was part of the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti and the Gruppo degli Otto, with which he participated in the Venice Biennial, where he won a prize: during the biennial a personal room was dedicated to him.

Although his line, his gesture and the pace of his painting always remained typically Italian, his career was influenced by his stay in the United States in the 1950’s, during which he was struck by Gorki’s painting and by Kline and De Kooning’s Action Painting. He was later appointed resident artist at Mills College in Oakland, California, professor at the New College of Fine Arts in Sarasota and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence.

He achieved international recognition with a commission from UNESCO: he painted in 1958 a large fresco, The Garden of Hope, for the institution’s headquarters in Paris.

In 1960, he won the Guggenheim Prize in New York, where he presented his « catalogue raisonné ». Afro died in Zurich in 1976.

The artist has been exhibited in many international museums, such as the Kunsthalle in Darmstadt, the National Gallery in Berlin and the Palazzo Reale in Milan.