Alfredo Volpi

Volpi was a self–taught artist whose intuition contributed to the development of the Brazilian avant–garde. During the second half of the 1950s, nonobjective, Concrete artists in Sao Paulo regarded Volpi's work as a point of reference for their vanguard project. A working–class artist, Volpi created elegant works that demonstrate an innate sense of what is essential; his oeuvre leans toward purity and reduction. Windows and banners are recurring motifs in his work, drawn from daily life and transformed into a completely abstract artistic vocabulary that intuitively anticipated by many years the use of primary colors and repetition that was the hallmark of Neo–Concrete artists in the 1960s. Drawing was a key element of Volpi's process, although autonomous drawings are rare in his production. The provenance of Volpi's drawings in MoMA's collection is significant—all of them belonged to Willys de Castro, one of the most important Neo–Concrete artists in Brazil and the person who linked Volpi and the Neo–Concretist movement.