Afro. Dalla meditazione su Piero della Francesca all’Informale

The Galleria Comunale d’Arte Contemporanea in Arezzo hosts an exhibition on Afro Livio Basaldella, one of the greatest artists of the post-war period and a representative of “Informale Italiano”.

«Forget about the figures, that is, the subjects, and observe the perfection of the forms of the voids. Learn to read ancient paintings without focusing on the subject, and you will learn to find the same values in modern paintings that may not have a naturalistic relationship at first glance». (Afro Basaldella in front of the works of Piero della Francesca in an interview collected by Valeria Gramiccia)

The spaces of the Galleria Comunale d’Arte Contemporanea in Arezzo, adjacent to the Church of San Francesco, which houses the famous cycle of the Legend of the True Cross by Piero della Francesca and serves as the first stage and introduction to Afro’s exhibition, host a refined collection of works belonging to one of the most interesting seasons of Afro’s art. Afro considered himself a “classical painter” and, in surpassing the boundary between abstraction and figuration, reworked Venetian tonalism, the luminosity and transparencies of Tiepolo, the volumes of Mantegna, and the spatiality and impassive pictorial rationality of Piero della Francesca.

Starting from Afro’s own statement in front of Piero della Francesca’s works, the exhibition aims to investigate the relationships between Afro, classical-Renaissance painting, and the great masters of the past, focusing particularly on the theme of mural painting, which occupies a privileged position in Afro’s production and still represents, in many respects, an unpublished research on the artist.
The journey begins with Afro’s early drawings from the early 1930s, inspired by Rubens, El Greco, Velázquez, and his debut paintings, including Mantegna’s Dead Christ, one of the works coming from Casa Cavazzini in Udine (which also houses an important cycle of Afro’s frescoes).
The section of the exhibition that delves into Afro’s involvement in the works of Eur in Rome is particularly engaging and scenic, featuring videos, documents, photographs, and magazines.
Among the loans from the Central State Archives and Eur S.p.A., the large preparatory cartoons (each measuring 6 meters in height) depicting the Sciences and the Arts, along with the precious preliminary sketch for Human and Social Activities, trace the genesis of the work that the artist had designed for the Palazzo dei Ricevimenti e dei Congressi within the architectural complex of E42 in Rome.
The international significance is also highlighted by the presence of paintings, including the Cycle of Seasons, coming from the Municipality of Rhodes, which will be exhibited for the very first time, thanks to the intervention of the Italian Embassy in Athens.
The exhibition is curated by Marco Pierini, with scientific coordination by Alessandro Sarteanesi, and organized by the Guido d’Arezzo Foundation in collaboration with the Municipality of Arezzo, in partnership with the Afro and Magonza Archive Foundation.

MUNICIPAL GALLERY