The guardian of time (2017) Painting by Silvaggio

Richard Silvaggio was born in Melbourne (Australia) on 2/15/1976. He enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara and in 2008 he graduated with honors (110 cum laude), with a thesis entitled FREAKSHOW, "Ugly and evil in art from the Middle Ages to contemporary art" , with Omar Galliani as supervisor.
His artistic career begins following grotesque themes, combining pictorial representations (often depicting clumsy and ugly characters), physical objects, installations, with the aim of giving greater completeness to the titles of the works. Subsequently he puts aside the bizarre aspect to follow a more delicate and decidedly more figurative line. The female figure, the movement and elegance of the body become a strong point for the artist. He completely abandons the use of color to devote himself solely to the monochrome image. The genius of his painting lies in the wise and elegant use of "non-colour". In fact, Richard manages with the exclusive use of black and white to create light / dark effects that make his figures plastic.
Those of his latest production, which he calls "The archetypes of nothing", are hidden identities, floating in an undefined space, ethereal, harmonious women, sometimes imposing as if to demonstrate that it is the soul that imposes itself and not the materiality of the body. His is an original language, almost provocative towards that contemporary art that sometimes bends to the clichés of the market: his is a freedom that allows him to constantly get involved by challenging the present.
Richard Silvaggio gives us his poetic vision of the unconscious, in a series of beautifully painted canvases and boards in oil. Like archetypes of childhood visions of ghosts, white sheets circulate suspended in the void in his works, filling with amazement those who observe them wandering in the void or resting, allowing a glimpse of the silhouette of whoever is their owner without ever revealing their appearance. Richard Silvaggio maintains the taste for the enigma unchanged, reviving it with refinement of intellect and pictorial execution. An artist gifted with a good technique, he tries his hand at describing the soft drapery in shades of grey, white up to intense dark, giving rise to never boring, never predictable grisailles supported by a strong spiritual-conceptual basis. The protagonist is that part of the ethereal being which is thought, called to fulfill the function of filling the existential voids, in this case materialized in candid, disturbing apparitions resulting from the artist's imagination and his ability to manage the variety with paint of its representations.
The artist's aim is to create an intimate dialogue between the work of art and the observer; the painting must transform itself into a sort of silent oracle capable of asking questions and inflicting answers.
Text by the curator Monica Ferrarini.

• Nationality: ITALY
• Date of birth : 1976
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary Italian Artists