Born in 1915, Volti had a strong feeling all along his life with the city of Villefranche-sur-mer, in the south of France, where he has developed his own artistic identity. He studied at the Decorative Arts School of Nice from 1928 to 1932 before arriving to Paris to enter the Fine Arts School. His main subject is almost exclusively devoted to the female body, as bathers or in a meditative state. From the south of France, he was strongly influenced by the antique inheritance of the Romans and the Etruscans, but he has assimilated also Maillol’s or Henry Moore’s works.
Smooth shapes are characteristic of his style and he inscribed his practice in the material tradition by proposing pieces in marble, in stone but also terracotta. These different materials show his interest to study material possibilities, aiming to imitate the skin, like with his stamped terracotta.
Like Maillol, he conceived large scale works, set on the floor without any base, to alleviate the composition, like in his reclining figures.

He became professor of wood sculpture at the Applied Arts School after 1950. This practice will have a strong influence on how Volti deal with the treatment of the surface in his production.
From the 1950’s, he began to gain notoriety and the State bought some pieces like the Femme, purchased in 1955 (Paris, Centre Pompidou, inv. AM1000S) or the Trois Grâces, purchased in 1959 (Paris, musée d’Art Moderne, AMS1). This latter model will be also used as a monument in Nice inaugurated in 1961. 

From this moment, the sculptor was commissioned for monuments, like the War Memorial at the l’Ile Rousse in 1954 or the Méditerranée for the building of the same name in Nice, following the retrospective of the sculptor career in 1959