Artists

Born in Florence in 1933, Riccardo Guarneri started to paint in 1953, while contemporaneously being involved with music. His first abstract paintings belong to the Informal movement.

His first personal exhibition was at The Hague in 1960. In 1962 he began to be interested in colour as light, in writing as painting and in the inherent problems of visual perception.

From this point on, sign, light and colour become entwined, giving rise to a richly sensitive poetic world and constituting, within its various stages, the central theme of a very personal journey.

The first extremely pale paintings appear, in which space is articulated by variations in light and the surfaces are mainly traced in pencil.

These paintings were exhibited for the first time in 1963, in his personal exhibition at “La Strozzina” in Palazzo Strozzi, Florence. He was co-founder of the group “Tempo 3” that presented itself as the third wave of abstract painting after Geometric and Informal Abstractionism. Beginning in 1964-1965 his work acquired a more rigorous and geometrical structure. In 1966 he was invited to the Biennale di Venezia and to the exhibition Weiss auf Weiss at the Kunsthalle in Bern. In 1967 he exhibited at the “Centro Proposte” at the Biennale de Paris and participated in the exhibitions of Nuova Tendenza.

He has received numerous national and international exhibition awards (Michetti, S. Lega, Fiorino, Termoli, Acireale, Praga, Jhlava, Fiesole, Taranto, Capo d’Orlando, Firenze and others). He taught at the Istituto Statale d’Arte in Florence and at the Corso Superiore of Industrial Design a year later. He participated in the international exhibitions of New Painting: Geplante Malerei, Tempi di percezione, Concerning painting, Konkrete Kunst, La peinture italienne aujourd’hui, Bilder ohne Bilder, Begegnung mit Italien, I colori della pittura, Empirica, etc., held in museums and galleries in Italy and abroad. Among his many private exhibitions, certain anthological exhibitions should be highlighted: those at Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster in 1972, Palazzo Pitti in Florence in 2004 and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Senigallia in 2011.

He taught for two years at the Università Internazionale dell’Arte, in Florence.

He exhibited at the Quadriennale di Roma in 1973 and 1986, as well as the Biennale di Milano in 1974.

In 1983 he was invited to participate in the retrospective exhibitions on Italian art: Linee della ricerca artistica in Italia 1950-1980, Astratta-Secessioni astratte in Italia dal dopoguerra al 1990, Continuità 1945-2000.

In 1977 he was granted the chair of Painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara and later at the Academies of Bari, Venice and Florence until 2003.

His works are part of the collections of various museums of contemporary art in Italy and abroad.