Rodrigo Naves Where Alfredo Volpi Starts to Get Complex: The Painter's Dialogue with Both Concretistas and Neoconcretistas Frontispiece (fig. 6a) To put it bluntly, Alfredo Volpi did not of his first retrospective at the Museu Snapshot taken at the exhibition Volpi: a Música da Cor [Volpi: The Music of endorse manifestos or publish theoretical de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro Color], organized by the Museu de Arte material. He barely uttered a word about (MAM-RJ, in 1957)—joined in bolstering Moderna, at the Ibirapuera Park in São Paulo (April 5–July 5, 2006). other artists and was not strongly tied Volpi's image of unaffectedness. That Photo courtesy of the MAM-SP archives to any Brazilian art trend. Volpi was the same year, in the exhibition catalogue © Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo son of Italian immigrant parents who for the MAM-RJ, Pedrosa wrote: “Volpi Fig. 1 owned a small business in a working- never consulted a foreign magazine This photo, published in an article by 1 Waldemar Cordeiro from the 1950s, class neighborhood of São Paulo. The to learn something about Picasso, shows the artist at home, at 154, Gama artist thrived on his simple, lifelong Matisse, Renoir, Van Gogh, or Gauguin's Cerqueira (Cambuci), where he played the guitar and was surrounded by his habits, and he was attached to his production. He never needed to look adopted children, José Roberto (left), neighborhood in the Cambuci, which at other people’s solutions (Volpi is Djanira (center), and his daughter, Eugênia Maria. at the time was a lower-middle-class not a pretentious person); instead, he Folha da Manhã, district where he spent his entire life. examined the people who surrounded São Paulo, April 20, 1952: 7 Photo by Gil Passarelli At the early age of twelve, Volpi went him, the humble human beings who © Folha da Manhã to work, first as a carver and bookbinder, gathered around him, children… VOLPI Imaginação © and then as a residential painter of everyday things and daily chores.” decorative arts. Volpi’s humble origins [Fig. 1] To the art critic, the painter likely contributed to his avoiding the was “incommunicado in the middle social scene of the visual arts milieu, of the Cambuci area.”3 thus reinforcing his image as a simple- minded person. Volpi was relu ctant to Indeed, Volpi was not a theoretician, accept influences or artistic affiliations,2 someone who clarified his conception and I do not believe it is by chance of the visual arts through written that he was primarily influenced by formulations and debates. Nevertheless, medieval painters such as Margaritone there are few Brazilian artists who— d´Arezzo or Giotto, the latter of whose apart from their artistic subjects— works he studied assiduously on his would have within their reach a richer only return trip to Europe, in 1950. It cultural milieu. That is to say, a modern is said that Volpi visited the Arena (or cultural scene in which dialogue and Scovegni) Chapel (1303–5) in Padua coexistence—and not merely etiquette eighteen times or so during that visit. and scholarly approach—prevailed, and thus taking into account the limitations It was this aura of simplicity that art intrinsic to one’s cultural milieu. To critics and writers employed to explain ignore this would be to identify Volpi’s Volpi’s personal and artistic purity as painting with a simplicity that would well as his intuitive approach. Even undoubtedly diminish the quandaries the Marxist critic Mário Pedrosa—one and complexities of the work. If, on one of the most important interpreters of hand, Volpi's painting seems to suggest Volpi’s work and the chief curator an e lementary approach lacking critical 252 253 Fig. 2 the Santa Helena group. [Fig. 2] Among Volpi, with friends at the Grupo Santa Helena workshop in São Paulo. them was Ernesto de Fiori, an Italo- From left to right: German painter and sculptor who had Francisco Rebolo, Volpi, Paulo Rossi Ossir, Nélson Nóbrega, and Mário Zanini. arrived in Brazil in 1936 and maintained Late 1930s a high level of productivity as an artist Photo courtesy of Olívio Tavares de Araújo and art critic; Lasar Segall, a Lithuanian VOLPI©Imaginação painter of Jewish birth who was trained in the German Expressionist milieu and had already settled in São Paulo in 1923; Tarsila do Amaral, a member of the 1922 Semana de Arte Moderna gene ration, who also was closely affili- ated with the avant garde tradition in Paris; and, finally, the art critic Sérgio Milliet, as well as the sculptor Bruno Giorgi. tension, on the other hand it would promoted diverse trends. He fostered Fig. 3 Zanini) or as butchers (as was the case Waldemar Cordeiro According to Giorgi’s statement to be deceptive to understand his painting these connections with an outstanding “Volpi, o pintor de paredes que traduziu with Pennacchi). the press at Folha de São Paulo (1979), merely as something accomplished with- and a real sense of purpose. I do not a visualidade popular” [Volpi, the wall painter who translated the popular the sculptor himself brought Mário out mediation or debate. As understood believe it was by mere chance that, in visual language] Despite their modest social and cultural de Andrade—a Modernist writer and by the poet and art critic Murilo Mendes, 1926, his curiosity led him to a lecture In this article, Cordeiro emphasizes backgrounds, the members of the Grupo Volpi’s dedication to folk traditions. Folha well-respected intellectual at the time— Volpi “became impersonal, as anonymous given by Filippo Tommasso Marinetti da Manhã, São Paulo, April 20, 1952: 7 Santa Helena participated in important and Milliet to Volpi's painting studio as a painter from the Middle Ages,”4 at Teatro Cassino Antárctica, in São Photo by Gil Passarelli discussions on the international art © Folha da Manhã in 1937, and bo th scholars “were because his painting concentrated on Paulo. If Volpi’s technical apprentice- milieu. On one hand, in the case of VOLPI©Imaginação amazed.”8 Later, in 1944, the year of experience beyond subjective lyricism. ship began during his early years as Pennacchi, one could see the influence Volpi’s first solo exhibition, de Andrade However, as suggested by another artist a painter-decorator, it was only in the of the Italian Novecento in his paint- bought Marinha [Seascape], now in the 6 and his friend, Willys de Castro, Volpi next decade of the 1930s that Volpi ings; moreover, Rebolo and Zanini collection of the Institute of Brazilian was able to “draw on a wealth of would come closer to joining an unoffi- analyzed the works of Car lo Carrà's Studies at the Universidade de São Paulo experience, which he shared—that is, cial association of artists—the Grupo fad, the “retour à l'ordre.” On the (IEB-USP). That same year de Andrade translated and articulated—with those Santa Helena—comprised of Francisco other hand, the group was receptive wrote an article for Folha da Manhã 5 eager to embrace his work.” Rebolo, Mario Zanini, Manoel Martins, to an Italian tendency that was overtly in which he described an “unrestrained Humberto Rosa, Fulvio Pennacchi, Aldo opposed: the Florentine painting temper” with regard to a painting that 7 Volpi maintaine d an intense level of Bonadei, and Clovis Graciano, among promoted by Ardengo Soffici. In the is “voluptuously lyrical.”9 Even if we productivity. During almost every phase others. Most of these artists came from second half of the 1930s, Volpi frequently stop at this point in Volpi's career, it of his career, he found ways to keep lower-class backgrounds and thus were attended art classes that the painter would be impossible not to refer to his own work in the forefront of discus- not exposed to art. As a result, they Paulo Rossi Ossir organized at his someone who was involved with the sions, participating in dialogues with were employed as vocational painters workshop; well-informed artists partici- São Paulo artistic and cultural milieus. other artists and intellectuals that (as was the case with Volpi, Rebolo, and pated in addition to those belonging to 254 255 Fig. 4 out through the production of specific among many others. In the late 1950s, Volpi at a reunion held to welcome the Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti to Brazil, works. Very often, Volpi, the midcareer Volpi's home in the Cambuci district in 1968. From left to right: Volpi; painter of the late 1940s Facades series, became a meeting place for artists, and Ungaretti; the Brazilian physicist and art critic Mário Schemberg; the painter has been incorrectly ascribed positions Volpi relished sharing his expertise with Hermelindo Fiaminghi; and the poets on issues he did not actually endor se. younger artists. During the 1960s, Volpi Haroldo de Campos (upper right) and Décio Pignatari (lower right). Due to both his silence on and distance became acquainted with intellectual 1968 from the group’s positions, Volpi came and artistic celebrities such as the Ital- Photo courtesy of Olívio Tavares de Araújo to be viewed in his old age as Cézanne ian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti [Fig. 4] and VOLPI©Imaginação was; that is, living in isolation in Aix- the Russian linguist Roman Jakobson, en-Provence, his public persona at the both of whom visited him at his work- mercy of Émile Bernard, who offered shop. Their visi ts testified that Volpi him information and interpretations was respected as an artist and not based on accounts by Maurice Denis, viewed simply as an exotic curiousity the artist’s most frequent contact.13 by Europeans passing through Brazil.