On the occasion of the Biennale arte , postponed for a year due to the pandemic, Ca 'Pesaro wants to start over from its collections and from painting, with the voice of one of the masters of post-World War II Italian art, Afro Basaldella .

Recognized as a central figure in international abstractionism, Afro starts first from Venice and then from Rome to bring his research to the United States, soon becoming the best known and most appreciated Italian artist in American collectors.

Thanks to the collaboration with the Afro Archive and the arrival of some important national and international loans, Ca 'Pesaro pays homage to an author well represented in its collections and intends to shed new light on the intense relationship that, in the fervent 1950s, it is established between Italian and American art that experienced the birth of abstract expressionism and action painting.

Through 45 masterpieces flanked by some selected drawings and precious archive materials, the International Gallery of Modern Art intends to present the crucial years of Afro's production, when the artist is in close contact with the American world and completes his ability to develop a language that is always personal, which combines the intimate assimilation of Venetian painting and tonal color with reflections on synthetic cubism and abstractionism.

Afro 's work thus becomes, in the monumental rooms on the second floor of Ca 'Pesaro , a great story, poetic and powerful, intimate and at the same time universal, set where memory and history are enriched with humanity and evocative grandeur, sustained from a very high technique and an inexhaustible love for painting.