Profumo's artistic journey started in the nineteen fifties with a series of figurative paintings. The works he displayed in 1956 in a one-man exhibition at the “San Matteo” Art Gallery in Genoa were still linked to the Ligurian tonalism of the thirties and were directly inspired by Paolo Rodocanachi's paintings. Nevertheless the fundamental elements which were still to characterize Profumo's maturity are already there: the interest in light, the geometrical simplification of the urban landscape, the research on colour carried out through subtle nuances and the representation of imaginary landscapes that do not correspond to any real places.

The landscape of the coastline in Ligury had already been celebrated in Fillia's (Luigi Colombo) futurist aerial painting through bird's-eye-views of the typical houses scattered on the coast. But while the futurist painters aimed at recreating the sensation of modern speed and therefore broke down volumes into multiple and simultaneous visions, Profumo’s work evokes the character of the landscape without representing its reality. He slowly runs his eyes over the plastered surfaces of the houses, savouring their texture. Everything is reduced to simple volumes remindful of Cezanne, but what's more important is the warm, yellowish light that touches the surfaces and makes them vibrate. The brushstrokes that coloured the plastered walls of the seaside dwellings becomes one with the strokes that colour the canvas.