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30 Reclining Figure, 1956 Signed 'Afro' lower right Mixed media on canvas 14 1 / 8 x 25 5 / 8 in, 36 x 65 cm Provenance The Artist's Estate Literature Rome, AA.VV., Afro, Catalogo Generale Ragionato, 1997, p.160, no.357 (illus. in colour) AFRO 1912-1976 Afro Basaldella, known as 'Afro', was one of the key protagonists of abstraction in post-war Italy. His work provides a fascinating link between the European avant-garde and the burgeoning movement of American Abstract Expressionism. Alongside Alberto Burri and Lucio Fontana, Afro sought to create an innovative visual vocabulary of a gestural and poetic abstraction that was greatly informed by his travels to Paris during the late 1930s. It was here that Afro was exposed to the work of Jean Arp, with whom he collaborated on the 1958 mural for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris together with Calder, Moore, Appel, Miró, Matta and Picasso. Travelling between Rome and New York throughout the 1950s, Afro was inspired by the vibrant cultural environment of the USA and worked with the Catherine Viviano Gallery on a number of exhibitions. While Afro maintained the sensation of nature in his style of organic abstraction, he amalgamated the spontaneous, gestural mark-making of American Abstract Expressionism into his work, largely influenced by his friendships with Gorky, Kline, Pollock and De Kooning. Reclining Figure is an outstanding work from this mature period that reveals Afro's development of a pictorial language of fluid signs, rounded contours and bright tones. The lyrical forms of red interwoven with the energetic handling of line across the canvas creates the rhythmic impression of the natural landscape, akin to the expressionist influences of the German modernist movement Der Blaue Reiter and the early spiritual works of Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee.