Afro 1950-1970
Dall’Italia all’America e ritorno / From Italy to America and Back

21/04 - 23/10/2022

Afro 1950-1970
Dall’Italia all’America e ritorno / From Italy to America and Back

curated by Elisabetta Barisoni and Edith Devaney 

Ca’ Pesaro – Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna, Venice

21 April – 23 October 2022 

Ca ‘Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art in Venice pays homage to Afro Basaldella, the undisputed protagonist of not only Italian abstraction.

Linked to the atmospheres of Venice and Rome, in the 1950s the artist made his first trip to the United States where he will stay for a long time thereafter. In these years he began a twenty-year collaboration with the Catherine Viviano Gallery and became one of the best known Italian artists in the United States, as evidenced by his participation in 1955 in the great MoMA collective “The New Decade: 22 European Painters and Sculptors”, where the main trends in European non-figurative art are presented. In the same year, Afro held a solo exhibition at Washington University in Saint Louis and took part in the jury of the “Pittsburgh International Prize”. His artistic and personal path is therefore intertwined with the experience of personalities such as Cy Twombly, Philip Guston, Robert Rauschenberg, Conrad Marca-Relli and Willem de Kooning.

The exhibition presents forty-five masterpieces from international museums and important private collections, chosen to dialogue with drawings and archival materials. Under the scientific direction of Gabriella Belli and curated by Elisabetta Barisoni and Edith Devaney, the exhibition is organized with the collaboration of the Fondazione Archivio Afro, in partnership with BNL BNP Paribas and with the support of Magonza Editore.