Villa Paloma – NMNM Alfredo Volpi - The Poetics of Colour

Caption:  Alfredo Volpi, Untitled, 1962, Oil and tempera on canvas 142x265 cm Mastrobuono Collection, São Paulo

© - Government Communication Department/Charly Gallo

Following the most recent major exhibition featuring the works of Hercule Florence, the Villa Paloma is reopening with a retrospective on Alfredo Volpi, with the support of the Instituto Alfredo Volpi de Arte Moderna and many enthusiastic collectors. 

Alfredo Volpi (who was born in Lucca, Italy in 1896 and died in São Paulo, Brazil in 1988) is a major Brazilian artist.  The NMNM is proud to present a retrospective of 70 of his works, for the first time in Europe - from his first oils on canvas (rural and urban landscapes from the 1930s to the 1940s) to works from the 50s, 60s and 70s, with their new palette of colours and pictorial techniques.  The public will be able to discover an artist who was fascinated, among other topics, by the Italian Renaissance, Matisse, Morandi and popular culture. 

Despite the success he achieved in the last three decades of his life, Volpi's story is that of a simple, reserved man who devoted his entire life to his work, while never forgetting his origins;  a man who, every day of his life, up to the age of 88, made his own frames, on which he stretched the canvas himself, applying the painstakingly prepared pigments to create the magic of colour. 

Like Morandi for the Italians, Volpi the colourist has become a hero and a real legend in Brazil.