A LFR ED O V O L P I T He P O Etics O F C O Lo Ur
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
ALFREDO VOLPI The Poetics of Colour Nouveau Musée National de Monaco ALFREDO VOLPI The Poetics of Colour Francisco Rebolo, Alfredo Volpi, Paulo Rossi Osir, Nelson Nóbrega and Mário Zanini, 1930s FOREWORD 7 ALFREDO VOLPI: COLOUR IN ALL ITS STATES 9 INSTITUTO ALFREDO VOLPI DE ARTE MODERNA 11 THE MONACO EXHIBITION Cristiano Raimondi 14 VOLPI Lorenzo Mammì 22 THE COMPLEXITY OF SILENCE Jacopo Crivelli Visconti 52 AUTHORS 60 WORKS 62 TEXTES EN FRANÇAIS 163 TEXTOS EM PORTUGUÊS 195 ALFREDO VOLPI La poétique de la couleur 228 BIOGRAPHY AND EXHIBITIONS 244 — BIBLIOGRAPHY 253 IMPRINT 254 6 FOREWORD Presenting the work of Alfredo Volpi at the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco means paying tribute to a man who spent his life extolling and promulgating the Brazil of his time through the use of colour and simplified forms. Volpi’s façades immerse us in a subtle and refined world, while his masts and flags convey the atmospheres of the ‘festas juninas’ with a delicacy and poetry of which only a great master is capable. Brazil and the Principality of Monaco are once again linked through art and research, and by the long-standing relationship between our country and our distant friends on the other side of the ocean. Volpi is a welcome guest here, where great artists and avant-gardes have developed, and I am more than happy to participate in the international exposition of this poet of colour, an exceptional painter in his great simplicity. H.R.H. The Princess of Hanover 7 8 ALFREDO VOLPI: COLOUR IN ALL ITS STATES It is a rare privilege to be able to display the work of Alfredo Volpi, an artist almost unknown in Europe. I wish to offer my warm thanks to the Instituto Alfredo Volpi for its support and to the Brazilian collectors that enthusiastically accepted to take part in this project. Cristiano Raimondi, the exhibition curator, has been able to assemble a series of top quality works that have allowed us to follow the various aspects of Volpi’s production. This exhibition will be a discovery for many. During their tour of Villa Paloma, art lovers and visitors in general will admire paintings that are not simply magnificent in their colouration but also modest in their ambition. In the way they offer a brief echo of the view of the sky and sea from the windows of the Villa, the work of one of the great colourists of the 20th century becomes more real and poetic, giving pleasure to all. Marie-Claude Beaud Director 9 Alfredo Volpi, 1960s INSTITUTO ALFREDO VOLPI DE ARTE MODERNA It is a great honour as the President of this organisation to have the privilege to open and grant cultural support to the first Alfredo Volpi retrospective in Europe. We see this magnificent initiative by the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco as educational as well as extremely relevant for the preservation and, particularly, the dissemination of the artist’s memory and production: a retrospective that shares the objectives and responsibilities of this institution. It is both an honour and a privilege, and I would like to thank the museum’s curators and team and, in particular, Her Royal Highness The Princess of Hanover. Pedro Mastrobuono President 11 Alfredo Volpi in his studio, 1970s THE MONACO EXHIBITION Cristiano Raimondi Still from the documentary Volpi, shot on 35mm film between 1971 and 1975 in São Paulo 14 The Monaco Exhibition Alfredo Volpi: The Poetics of Colour is the first retrospective exhibition to be devoted to the Italian-Brazilian artist outside of Latin America. With more than sixty works, this tribute aims to provide a chronological overview of the artistic research carried out by one of the best-loved and most prolific artists of Brazil. Thirty years after he died, Volpi’s work is still relatively unknown outside the country, due to the indifference of a closed art system supported by a solid internal market. In recent years, major international institutions have put on several exhibitions devoted to the art of Latin America and, together with the work of researchers, curators, and gallerists, it has at last been possible to retrace the history of Brazilian art, making it intelligible also to those beyond its borders. The arts in Brazil are permeated by a cultural syncretism that is an inherent part of the composition of its society. This is a country that has liberated itself from its colonial, imperial, and slave-trading past, and one with a deep desire for modernity and progress. In the field of the arts, the influence first of academy painting and then of the European avant-garde movements (primarily Expressionism, Futurism and the Bauhaus) began to mix with influ- ences from Portuguese, indigenous and African traditions, blended together by a process of aesthetic métissage of forms and colours. As a direct result of the ‘Semana de Arte Moderna’ of 1922, which was organised by Manuel Bandeira, Mário de Andrade and Oswald de Andrade, the late 1920s brought a new desire for cultural independence. On 1 May 1928, Oswald de Andrade unveiled the ‘Movimento Antropofágico’, with its Cannibalist Manifesto inspired by Futurism (de Andrade was in Paris with Marinetti during the presentation of the Manifesto of Futurism). In it, he describes Brazilian ‘creation’ as a conscious digestion and reformulation of European-dominated colonial and academic styles, with the aim of bringing into being a national avant-garde language in both literature and the visual arts. The arts are seen as a means for reinventing the identity of a rapidly metamor- phosing ‘global’ country. A country that, with its centuries-old multiculturalism, was showing the world its insatiable appetite for progress. It did this through cultural speculations that were sophisticated and ground-breaking and, most of all, far-removed from the imagination of the rich industrial Paulista middle classes and the decadent Carioca aristocratic elites. This multiculturalism considered Italian immigration to be one of the key elements for the construction of the identity and culture of Brazil, especially in the rich south-east areas and in the state of São Paulo. Born in Lucca in 1896, Volpi was the offspring of a generation that had had to leave Italy in the late 19th century in search of the dream of work and emancipation. He was only two years old when he left Tuscany with his family. In the late 19th century, the Italians in the centre and north had been the first to be hit by the economic crisis that followed the Unification of Italy and the introduction of new taxes on large landed estates. However, things in Brazil 15 Cristiano Raimondi were not too easy either at the time: slavery had been abolished by imperial decree, and Brazil had become a republic at the end of the century. The end of slavery had created great demand for skilled workers, preferably white. There were many, very attractive incentives to encourage immigration, but they also led to situations of considerable hardship and social inequality, even among white immigrants. This situation was brought to an end in 1902 by the Prinetti Decree, which was promulgated by the Italian government to restrict the freedom of immigration to those who had enough money to pay for their passage. Over 3.6 million Italians arrived in Brazil between 1880 and 1924, and together they formed the largest community of Italians abroad: today there are over 30 million Italian-Brazilians in the country. Volpi’s life unfolded in this tumultuous new social situation. From the moment he arrived, he lived in Cambuci, a district of artisans, traders and skilled workers. It was a close-knit, united community, where most of the Italians lived along with others. Italian culture remained very much alive among the immigrants and, as the years went by, it became one of the essential elements of the Paulista cultural environment. Volpi did not have the financial resources of Anita Malfatti, Oswald de Andrade or Tarsila do Amaral, who were able to travel to Europe and the United States. He was not personally able to see the masters of the past and present, such as the Impressionists, Expressionists, Cubists, and Fauves, and his social status meant he was not able to follow the latest trends and debates that were going on in the salons of the Paulista intellectual elite in the early 1920s. However, his innate sense of colour and his inquisitiveness, his passion for the arts and his impartial love of culture earned Volpi countless travels and awards. He worked as a craftsman and decorator, but he also never missed any of the exhibitions put on in São Paulo. He discussed matters with his artist friends in the Santa Helena group but never wanted to join a particular artistic movement, even when it was the most important artists of the moment who asked him to. He was a researcher and, with a certain degree of success, he experimented with an artistic language that still did not fully represent him. He was interested in discussions, but not in becoming part of a collective vision. In 1950, the Osirarte tile company, set up by the artist and architect Paulo Cláudio Rossi Osir, with whom Volpi had been working for many years, organised a Grand Tour of Italy for him and Mario Zanini. This turned out to be an initiatory journey, during which Giotto, Cimabue and Margaritone d’Arezzo became Volpi’s new benchmarks. The two-dimensionality and Byzantine-style compositions in painting and the early Renaissance became his starting points for the creation of a style that was modern, but always linked to folk culture.