Raffaele Rossi Argotica – Curated by Martina Cavallarin and Antonio Caruso
Opening | 1 April 2023 at 6.30 p.m. – 1 April – 7 May 2023
Saturday 1 April at 6.30 p.m. the Kyro Art Gallery in Pietrasanta presents ARGOTICA, solo exhibition of the artist Raffaele Rossi, curated by Martina Cavallarin and Antonio Caruso.
ARGOTICA is the first solo exhibition of this artist from Piedmont in Pietrasanta. Since 1975, Raffaele Rossi has lived between the Padua region and Venice where he attended the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica and the Scuola Libera del Nudo. It is in the Venetian lagoon, a heterotopia of natural and artificial places, that he finds his promised land of inspiration and source for colours, shapes and suggestions, which he brings to life in his work through a peerless application of traditional techniques applied with a modern vision and outlook.
By exploring poetics and technique, and the immersion in endlessly nuanced hues and landscapes translated through his expert brush, Raffaele Rossi conceived the name for the exhibition and has brought his vision of the salty and wild lagoon to the walls of the Kyro Art Gallery. This word ARGOTICA is a title that derives from Gothic art, which again, when modified to Goetic art, means magical art. Magic defines the lagoon exhibited by the artist in the gallery, and is revealed to us through his various techniques and instruments. A cascade of works on paper, small-format boards that capture colour, brushstrokes of
landscapes that expand from flat surfaces to three-dimensional supports, pieces that the artist creates himself in a blend of artistic talent and craftsmanship.
Even his ship, the installation at the centre of the exhibition, bears the same name, and is a metaphor insomuch as its ‘ARGOTIC’ symbolism stands for the voyage of man’s metamorphosis through the arcadian mistiness that Raffaele Rossi serenely conveys to our reality.
Raffaele Rossi
Raffaele Rossi, born in Alba (CN) in 1956.
In 1975, after attending the Liceo Artistico in Novara and fascinated by the ancient Venetian paintings, he spends a few years in Mogliano Veneto in the province of Treviso where he holds his first solo exhibition in 1978. During this period he studies copperplate engraving at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica and, also in Venice, he studies at the Scuola Libera del Nudo.
Fascinated by ancient painting techniques, he approaches the workshop of two Venetian painters: Valeria Rambelli and Ottone Marabini. From them he learns to grind and mill colours with egg tempera and oils, he learns to prepare boards and canvases and he becomes devoted to the research and reuse of ancient materials. He experiments with art of fresco which ignites a passion for plastered and textured surfaces. This is the foundation for his pictorial creativity characterised by rich, deep surfaces prepared with lime plaster and inert elements such as marble dust, sand and natural adhesives.
He lives and works in the province of Padova.