Afro Basaldella studied art and later taught mosaic in Venice. Most likely inspired by the radiant ambience of La Serenissima and its pictorial tradition, Afro’s paintings emanate an underlying luminosity. Through emphasis on transparent and overlapping, complementary light-soaked and darker hues and on shivering contours, the forms in the painting assume a lyrical, even poetic, character. They linger on the border between traces of figuration and complete abstraction. Afro deployed post-Cubist aesthetics, indebted to collage compositions. A frequent traveller to the United States from 1950, he also assimilated the gestural character of American Abstract Expressionism. This manifests itself in his forceful and expressive application of paint.