From Thurdsay 19th March 2015 the Galleries Il Milione and Antonio Battaglia hold the solo exhibition of Riccardo Guarneri in Milan in both locations.
The works from the Seventies will be presented at the historical Il Milione Gallery, while the last ten years’ work – including the more recent works on paper - will be presented at the emerging Antonio Battaglia Gallery. The Florentine artist, a leading exponent of Italian Analytic Painting, is back in Milan at last.
The title Pittura is related to Riccardo Guarneri’s in-depth research about the syntax of painting itself; whereas during the Seventies the artist would prefer a simple and rigorous geometric structure, in the Eighties the colour acquires greater freedom of expression and the artist modulates on the canvas blots, tracks and shades that soften the rigour of the structure, adding new sensitivity to his work.
“Images suspended in the vacuum, piercing marks, chromatic mists, light inconsistencies of lights are situations that have been present since the Sixties’ works where the artist prefers to remove recognizable elements by constructing subtle atmospheres on the edge of nothing in harmony with the levity of the invisible. The choice of the geometric language with all its structural experimentations evokes musical connections between colours and sounds and allows infinite variations of elements, temporal series included into the slightest shades; nearly imperceptible transitions within the rhythm of the composition” (extract from a text by Claudio Cerritelli on “Titolo”, year 23, n. 67, spring-summer 2013).
Riccardo Guarneri was born in 1933 in Florence, where he lives and works. After a short informal period, in 1962 he starts a research based on sign and light that become his principal objects of study within a minimal geometric structure. He starts with his first solo exhibition at The Hague in 1960. He takes part in The Biennale in 1966 (with Agostino Bonalumi and Paolo Scheggi) and the exhibition “Weiss auf Weiss” at Bern Kunstalle; he then takes part in the Biennial of Paris in 1967 in the “New Artists” section. In 1972 he holds his first anthological exhibition at the Westfalischer Kunstverein of Munster. He takes part in the Quadriennale of Rome in 1973 and 1986. In 1981 at Palazzo delle Esposizioni of Rome he exhibits his works in “Linee della ricerca artistica in Italia 1960-1980”, an exhibition that in 1997 is proposed again at the Kunsthalle of Cologne “Abstrakte Kunst Italiens '60/'90”. In 2007 he participates in “Pittura Analitica anni '70” at Palazzo della Permanente in Milan. In 2008 he is among the artists of the exhibition “Pittura Aniconica” at Mantegna House of Mantua; in 2011 he takes part in “Percorsi riscoperti dell'arte italiana - VAF-Stiftung 1947-2010” at the Mart Museum of Trento and Rovereto. He has taught painting in Carrara and Venice Academies of Art.