Born into a working-class family of Italian immigrants, Alfredo Volpi remained an outsider to the experimental and cultural movements of the 1910s and 1920s in São Paulo. Since childhood, he had worked as a carpenter. Alongside his study of painting at the Liceu de Artes e Ofícios [São Paulo School of Arts and Crafts], he developed an observational painting technique that did not require drafting and could be produced on small-scale supports made of inexpensive materials such as cardboard or wood. One example is Untitled [Untitled] (undated), possibly dating from the late 1910s or the early 1920s. Volpi’s style during these formative years seems to have been influenced by the macchiaioli school — a group of Tuscan painters that preceded the Impressionists — whose paintings are noted for their receding tonal gradations and structured application of brushstrokes. Untitled portrays a rural landscape, probably from the region around Mogi das Cruzes, São Paulo, which Volpi frequented and from whose festas juninas, or Saint John festivities, he would draw inspiration beginning in the 1940s with his well-known paintings of the festival’s iconic flags. In Untitled, the sky, smoke and lake are paintedwith dark shades of gray and blue which also color the fisherman’s clothes. This earthy, sandy palette marks the buildings in the background, while grayish greens underscore the vegetation surrounding the lake. The colors of the sky are juxtaposed with those employed for the water; combined, they occupy most of the small composition. These early works, described by some critics as “stains,” evidence Volpi’s commitment from early on to an economy of color and subtly-toned stripes. From this initial period we also see how Volpi paid close attention to the structural organization of his paintings.

— Guilherme Giufrida, assistant curator, MASP, 2018