hu SENGE (2022) Painting by Fabrizio Riccardi

Fabrizio Riccardi was born in Rome in 1942 to a Neapolitan noblewoman of Spanish origin and an officer of the Italian navy.

The war is over. his family moved to Turin, where he attended his artistic studies and was initiated into painting by the master Raffaele Pontecorvo. His first exhibition experiences date back to
end of the 50s in the exhibitions of dopolavoristi and amateurs, where he earns some small prizes in impromptu competitions. With the money from the sales he pays the first canvases, colors and rents in a makeshift studio.
In this period, the meeting with the gallery owner Arturo Bottello (Piedmont Artistic and Cultural), which will have a lot of importance in the years to come. To do his military service, he interrupts his architecture studies. gets married and continues to paint thanks to the commissions of wealthy families residing in the Chianti villas, At the end of the 1960s, Pippo Russo presents at the Vìotti gallery in Turin with a dozen painted tables under his arm and a presentation by the naive painter Irene Invrea
His painting creates interest. He signs his first contract and enters the world of fantastic painting, meets various painters, gallery owners and collectors. Among all, he makes great friends with the Belgian painter Alexis Keunen who will become one of his spiritual masters and will introduce him to the international market.
Through his friend Keunen he exhibits in France. Belgium and the Netherlands. He is noticed by a gallery owner from Gìnevra, with whom he will work for a few years. to then move to the painters' stable of the skilled discoverer of talents and gallery owner Jean Pierre Carlier who works mainly in the north of France and Belgium, at the death of these he is in Brussels with Catherine Fernet, in New York with Neil Zukerman, in Paris with Claude Cuissac, in Vence with Marion Duteurtre, in Amsterdam with Pieter Noldus, in Florence with Wilma Michaud, in Turin with Paola and Piero Cerutti, in Hardelot with Guy Ligner.
Divorces and remarries: he returns to live in Torìno
In the mid-90s he met the merchant Jean Pierre Giraudo who operates in French-speaking African countries; he is offered the opportunity to combine his love of travel with his work and he therefore begins a series of exhibitions that will take him from the Ivory Coast to New Caledonia, from Gabon to Cameroon and Dubai.
In March 2010 he made his debut with paintings, dedicated to the characters of the "Songes Drolatiques by Pantagruel" inspired by the sketches of the French Renaissance writer Francois Rabelais, which he will present in Turin at the Davico Gallery, in Switzerland at the Au temps qui passe a Genolier gallery. , in France at the Alternance Gallery in Hardelot. His works from this period earned him international recognition, including: silver medal at the Salon des Artistes Francaise 2012 at the grad Palais in Paris, the gold medal du Consseil Regional de la Basse-Normandie at the 2012 biennial in Tichebray, France . In March 2014 the young gallery owner Carlotta Canton emerges from the ashes of the Davico gallery in Turin who, armed with the sacred flame of love for art and beauty, putting together the works of the past with the recent ones of this artist proposes them in an exhibition in the new Davico Arte gallery in Turin. Fabrizio Riccardi boasts an impressive number of personal exhibitions and participations in exhibitions all over the world, and declares to have understood in his long career that he did not try to become the master of the masters of fantasy and visionary painting but is content mainly with being a simple interpreter of their dreams.

ABOUT THE "SONGES DROLATIQUES DE PANTAGRUEL"

In 2004 Fabrizio Riccardi met Rabelais and his "Bizarre Dreams": it was love at first sight and immediately the project was born to revive those characters, whose 500 years of history have not in the least affected their strength and enamel. The Artist thus revisits each figure through his personal lens, giving each one a new caricature and fantastic spirit. The “fil rouge” that unfolds from image to image is made up of stage tables on which each character moves, creating a sort of twisted and bizarre theatrical show whose interpretation is left to the eyes and emotion of the beholder.
120 38x46 tablets depicting as many bizarre, crazy timeless characters.

• Nationality: ITALY
• Date of birth : 1942
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary Italian Artists