Alfredo Volpi

Who was Alfredo Volpi?

Alfredo Volpi, was a famous painter of the artistic and cultural Brazilian modernist movement. He was born in Lucca, Italy but, less than two years later, he was brought by his parents to São Paulo, Brazil, where he lived for most part of his life. He was one of the most important artists of the so-called Grupo Santa Helena.

Volpi was a self-taught painter, producing his first naturalist painting at the age of twelve. Although his first paintings could resemble, in some way, those of expressionist artists,. he soon focused into a most peculiar style, using geometric abstract forms and switching from oil paint to tempera. He started painting façades of houses in a highly stylized and colorful manner and this recurrent theme became pervasive all through the 1950s, after a brief "concretist" period. The 1960s witnessed the development of his trademark "banderinhas" for which Volpi became famous and which originated from Brazilian folklore: the artist would use the small-flag pattern to show an increasing sense of color combination and balanced composition which would eventually place him among the major Brazilian artists of his time.