Volpi was a self-taught artist. He immigrated to Brazil in 1897 and completed his technical education at the Escola Profissional Masculina do Brás, in São Paulo. He worked as a wall painter and a decorator before dedicating himself to artistic activity. In 1935, he joined the group of painters known as the Grupo Santa Helena, which included artists Mário Zanini (1907-1971), Aldo Bonadei (1906-1974), and others. Volpi painted portraits and landscapes up until the mid-1940s, when he adopted the theme of façades in a series of paintings of Itanhaém, inspired by the capacity for synthesis that he appreciated in the work of the painter Emygdio de Souza (1868-1949). In 1950, he traveled to Europe, where he took an interest in the effect of tempera, a type of paint made with an egg-yolk binder, used in the Italian frescoes made by Giotto (circa 1267-1337). From that point on, he started painting with this technique and adopted a geometric language. In 1954, he painted his first canvases with the theme of little flags, a reference to popular festivals that also establishes a formal dialogue with the abstract language used by Brazilian concretist art in that same period.

— MASP Curatorial Team, 2020