Afro Basaldella (Udine, 1912 – Zurich, 1976) was an Italian painter and a leading figure in postwar abstraction. Known simply as Afro, he developed a language in which color preserves memories of the visible world and echoes of earlier painting.
Early Years and the Scuola Romana
Born into a family of artists, Afro trained in Florence and Venice. His brothers Dino and Mirko became sculptors.
In 1930, a scholarship from the Fondazione Artistica Marangoni enabled him to travel to Rome. There, he encountered the artistic circles of the Scuola Romana.
Three years later, he exhibited alongside other artists from Friuli at Milan’s Galleria Il Milione, run by the Ghiringhelli brothers. In 1937, he held a solo exhibition at the Galleria della Cometa in Rome.
During these formative years, tonal painting and the study of the Old Masters helped shape his artistic vision.
A Dialogue with the Old Masters
His early Cristo morto da Mantegna reflects this close engagement with the past. The construction of space and the relationships between forms remained important throughout his subsequent development.
In 2023, the exhibition Afro. Dalla meditazione su Piero della Francesca all’Informale in Arezzo explored this enduring dialogue. It offered a fresh perspective on the relationship between his abstract language and the traditions of Italian painting.
Afro Basaldella and Postwar Abstraction
From 1950, his collaboration with the Catherine Viviano Gallery in New York opened a new chapter. Encounters with American painting contributed to the development of his increasingly abstract language.
In 1956, he received the award for best Italian painter at the Venice Biennale.
In his mature paintings, luminous areas of color and translucent passages create a fluid sense of space. Traces of recognizable forms remain, yet they never settle into a fixed narrative. Instead, color evokes presences, distances, and rhythms.
The Gruppo degli Otto
Formed in 1952 with the support of critic Lionello Venturi, the Gruppo degli Otto brought together eight distinct artistic personalities. Its members were Afro Basaldella, Emilio Vedova, Renato Birolli, Antonio Corpora, Mattia Moreni, Ennio Morlotti, Giuseppe Santomaso, and Giulio Turcato.
Presented at that year’s Venice Biennale, the group sought to move beyond the opposition between abstraction and representation.
Venturi’s concept of astratto-concreto described painting that gave forms and colors their own expressive freedom while retaining connections with nature and lived experience. Despite their individual differences, these artists helped renew Italian painting after World War II.
Afro Basaldella and Caffè Aragno
Afro’s relationship with Rome also found expression in mural decoration. In 1950, he created engraved panels for Caffè Aragno, housed in Palazzo Marignoli.
These works were later restored and incorporated into Apple Via del Corso, which opened in May 2021. They preserve a tangible connection between his artistic research and one of Rome’s historic meeting places.
→ Discover Caffè Aragno and the Scuola Romana
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