Afro

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

Oakland, The Mills College Art Gallery; San Francisco, H. M. De Young Museum; Santa Barbara, Museum of Art, Afro, 1958

Mario Graziani, Afro: Catalogo Generale Ragionato Dai documenti dell’Archivio Afro, Rome 1997, p. 125, n. 297, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly lighter and brighter in the original. Condition: This work is in good condition. There is light wear and handling towards the edges with some associated paint loss. There are very fine drying cracks throughout the composition. Examination under ultra-violet light reveals tiny spots of retouching throughout.
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Afro’s Cronaca (Autobiographia) is a powerful example of the artist’s extraordinarily gestural style of painting. A bravura display of Afro’s expert manipulation of the brush, the work was painted in 1953, when Afro was approaching the creative peak of his career. Acquired directly from the artist by the family of the current owners, Sotheby’s is delighted to be offering Cronaca (Autobiographica)at auction for the very first time.

A scintillating combination of cool and warm tones combine in thick washes of pigment, the softer shapes within the background contrasting with the more angular forms delineated at the centre of the composition. Vivid green complements bright pink and dazzling yellow against the earthy, somewhat more organic, tones that dominate the edges and corners of the canvas. At the time of the work’s creation Afro was working alongside a group known as Gruppo degli Otto Pictori Italiani, with whom he had exhibited at the 1952 Venice Biennale, yet  Cronaca (Autobiographia) also displays Afro’s growing interest in the art of his American contemporaries following a visit to New York in 1950. The painting of William de Kooning and Arshile Gorky was of particular inspiration, and Afro later recalled the immense importance of Gorky in particular on the development of his own style: "Intrepid, emotional, full of love, Gorky taught me to research the truth without false modesty, ambition and formal hesitation. From him I learnt more than from everyone else to research only inside me: where images are still rooted in their obscure origins and unconscious truthfulness" (the artist cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, Rome, Galleria dell'Obelisco, Arshile Gorky, 1957, n.p.).

Despite Afro’s discovery of the American painters, Cronaca (Autobiographica) is an intensely personal work, as the title (which means Chronicle (Autobiography) in English) suggests, as though the artist was creating his own unique self-portrait. A joyful and exuberantly executed work, Cronaca (Autobiographica) truly displays Afro’s extraordinary mastery of his medium: the work of an artist reveling in his remarkable painterly language.