Alfredo Volpi, the son of Italian immigrants (his mother was from Lucca and his father from Bologna), arrived in Brazil in 1897 when he was just one year old. In the 1950s, during a trip to Italy, Volpi encountered Giotto’s frescoes and became interested in the use of tempera, a paint made with egg white. Fachada marrom (1950–1960s) is representative of this moment, in which he also created his first works using geometric patterns from the bandeirinhas – an element that established dialogues with the geometric abstractionism of Brazilian Concretist artists. In this phase of Volpi’s work we observe a notable tension: the little flags are placed against building façades, another element drawn from the folk universe. Suspended by fine horizontal lines like in folk festivals, the small flags seem to float above the solid, stable façades. Fachada marrom is also emblematic of how Volpi began to treat canvas space from then on, with segmented fields of colour, maintaining discreet yet irregular contours.
—Fernando Oliva
