Stoned Mutants in Grotesque and Surreal Paintings by Fabrizio Riccardi

Fabrizio Riccardi (Italian, b.1942,) one of the last few living “traditional” surrealist painters, was born in Rome, Italy, but grew up in Turin, where he completed his studies and began to develop his artistic skills.

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His first exhibitions date back to the late 1950s, when he received his first critical approvals. Fate and luck brought him to Florence, where he lived for 35 years, exhibiting throughout Europe, primarily in France, Belgium, and Germany. In the 1990s he started to exhibit worldwide, in solo and collective shows, from the United States to the Ivory Coast, from Gabon to Dubai, passing through New Caledonia, Japan, China and Israel. Since 2010, he has been sharing his life and work time between Turin and the beautiful nature of the Alta Langa countryside.

Protagonists of Fabrizio’s works are mysteriously baroque, metaphysical, and fantastic Renaissance subjects, created with meticulous professionalism. They are the fruit of memories, of experiences, of an incessant search for a modification of reality within a laborious and delirious inner journey. Riccardi explores great themes of imagination that give life to these characters, interpreted in unusual and precious ways, ranging from soft reptiles to faces by Pierrot, all without ever forgetting the Venetian mask, which leads the observer into a fantastic festival in which the comedians, in their perpetual swinging, rotate with fantastic and miraculous unpredictability.