Dino e Mirko Basaldella

Dino (Udine, 1909 - 1977) was the eldest of the three Basaldella brothers and the one who remained most attached to Udine.

He attended art school in Venice, establishing himself as a sculptor. Lately, he moved to Florence and Rome, where he developed a personal style defined as “neo-Hellenistic”, influenced by ancient classic sculpture.

From the late 1950s onwards, the artist developed a particular interest in industrial waste materials and their potential for reuse. Materials like iron, metal and exposed welds became the protagonists in works such as Spartaco, Orecchio di Dionisio and Ferro, presented in this room. Another example of this type of works is the monumental sculpture El Partidor, restored in 2024 and now exhibited In the ground floor atrium.

His brother Mirko (Udine, 1910 - Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1969) unlike Dino, travelled extensively, and was influenced by different cultures. Those eclectic influences leading him to an artistic primitivism that we can see in the two Chimere and Motivo a rocchi exhibited in this room.

Afro e Mirko Basaldella

Afro Libio was born in Udine in 1912. As did Dino and Mirko attended art school in Venice, Then, the three brothers debuted at the “Scuola friulana d'Avanguardia” (Friulian Avant-garde School) in 1928.

Two years later he arrived in Rome, where he became involved with the Roman School. After this experience he moved to Milan, where he worked in Arturo Martini's studio, alongside his brother Mirko. Martini’s style influenced both artists in their choice of subjects, their anti-classical approach and their expressionist echoes.

Then the two brothers went their separate ways, each pursuing his own artistic interpretation.

After various experiments, Afro devoted himself to Informal art. Thanks to his travels in the United States he approched the American Abstract Expressionism, which influences are developed in Angelica (1964), where is showed a drastic reduction of the pictorial palette.

Mirko, after a post-Cubist period, experimented with abstraction through “intertwined motifs”, which we find both in the tempera paintings and wax drawings exhibited here - donated to the museum by the brothers in 1974 by their mother's willing – and, particularly, in the sketch for the Gate of the Fosse Ardeatine (1950).