Mario Volpe

His most significant influences can be found in the New York School of painting of the fifties and sixties, his architecture studies, and his roots in Colombia's Caribbean.

After completing his architecture diploma in 1961, a scholarship from the Carnegie Institute allowed him to spend a summer at the American Academy in Fontainebleau, France, where he started to experiment with abstract drawing and became acquainted with painters and sculptors.

In 1964, a travel scholarship from the Art Students League took him on a study trip through Europe (London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Madrid and Sevilla).

After a year in Rome, where he met his wife, Brigit Scherz, Volpe moved back to the United States, to take up a position as assistant professor in the Studio Arts Department of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

"[7] “His pictorial motifs stem from the fortunate meeting or collision of a temperament of Caribbean ancestry with the purism of a researcher trained at a New York art college who has absorbed the great lessons of European art.”[8] “The canvases and the drawings of Mario Volpe powerfully evoke a destiny where diverse influences have made their mark.