Yasmin Brandolini d’Adda was born in Cape Town in 1929. Having also trained in London and Florence, Brandolini d’Adda naturally welcomed the major contemporary developments of the 20th century. Her early work displayed traces of universality and wholeness. Applying a figurative approach, her paintings mixed landscapes, female nudes and other motifs that internalised a sense of abstract completion.
Brandolini d’Adda’s career was blighted by an unfortunate 20-year hiatus to a debilitating illness. Nevertheless, she managed to transform this unhappy plight into an opportunity for aesthetic evolution. After she recovered from her illness, Brandolini d’Adda returned to art in the 1970s, wholeheartedly embracing the abstract vogue of the era. Indirectly inspired by minimalist and colour field painting, her shapes became geometric and her colours self sufficient, while her composition questioned the flatness of the medium: sometimes confirming, other times contravening.
Brandolini d’Adda passed away in Milan in 2012.
