Alfredo Fabbri lost his father at the age of two. He and his twin brother were raised by their mother with much difficulty in their home town. Towards the end of the war, Fabbri moved to live with his aunt and uncle, who owned and cultivated their lands. There, he attended technical schools and began to draw landscapes, farm workers, and fields, immersed in that world where he was also required to work. Between 1948-49, he enrolled in a drafting school in Turin. However, he was unable to graduate following an accident that impaired his sight. At the end of the 1940s. Fabbri began military service first in Catania and later in Rome. He began to study art by going to see the original works directly. At the beginning of the 1950s, he returned to Tuscany and moved to Pistoia. He often went to Florence where he met and associated with Ottone Rosai, Ardengo Soffici, and Alfiero Cappellini, all artists fundamental to his training. An artistic partnership was formed with Cappellini especially, who often spent time outdoors on a daily basis. In 1954, Fabbri had his first personal exhibition in Grosseto. The following year he participated with some works at the VII Quadrennial in Rome. In 1957, he exhibited at Lyceum with Conti, Capocchini, and Colacicchi and one of his works was acquired to become part of the Palazzo Pitti’s Modern Art Gallery collection. Beginning in the 1960s, Fabbri’s style and taste changed. He turned from the lessons of the contemporary masters to studying the primitives Cimabue, Giotto, and Masaccio to rediscover their very origins and traditions In 1988, he illustrated the poet Piero Bigongiari’s Suite parigina (Parisian Suite). The 1980s were effectively characterized by intense graphic activity that became important because he paid less attention to realistic painting. Fabbri began to make lithographs, often also for illustrative purposes, with clear, easily legible images. Since the 1990s, he preferred themes linked to views of the Maremma and to still lifes with flowers, while continuing to paint portraits.
(Mountain Study) The painting that Fabbri himself has donated to the Mac,n belongs to the final period of the artist’s career. Although the themes remained unchanged, his mark became increasingly fluid and light, leaving key fields of colors on the canvas to define the spaces. With great poetry, the artist reproduced the very colorful vase of flowers in the foreground, dwelling on that element without neglecting the bright colors of the snow-covered mountain touching an ice-blue sky that traverses the large window. In this painting, each subject has its own specific location, created by the artist with bold, fluid brushstrokes, as if trying to satisfy his own taste and especially his own optimism, demonstrating the satisfaction enjoyed as he worked.
mm 1000x1000