User:Cosimo Ricatto/sandbox

Cosimo Di Leo Ricatto (Cosimo Ricatto, Catania, December 31, 1950) is an Italian artist. Since 2011 he is also a gallery owner. Born in Sicily, he has lived and worked as an artist in Milan, New York, and Amsterdam. Since 1973 he has exhibited in numerous public and private venues, including: Galleria Il Milione, Milan; 27th Salon Jeune Peinture Paris; Velan, Turin; Galleria Seno, Milan; Galleria A. M. S. Marlborough, Santiago; Galleria Noire, Turin; Sandra Gering Gallery, New York; Kubinsky Gallery, Stuttgart; Lucas Espai, Valencia; Galleria Cavellini, Milan; PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara; Museo Ken Damy, Brescia; La Quadriennale, Rome; La Biennale di Venezia, Venice; La Triennale, Milan; Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, New York; Memorial Art Museum, Fort Dodge, Iowa, and many others. His work is present in various public and private collections in Europe, the United States, and across the world (Piero Cavellini, catalogue “Story post#3”, Brescia, November 2006).

Life and Early Career: From Siracusa to Milan
Born in Catania, Sicily, he grew up in Siracusa. Already intent on embarking upon the career of an artist, at the age of 10 he enrolls at the Istituto Statale d’Arte of Siracusa, where he acquires the initial technical tools and starts developing the first contents of the medium. Afterwards, he continues his studies at the Istituto Statale d’Arte of Siracusa where he graduates in Sculpture in 1968. That year he moves to Milan and enrolls at the Accademia di Bellle Arti di Brera where he attends the Sculpture classes of Professor Alik Cavaliere Alik Cavaliere Starting in 1973, and following his studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, his artistic output is strongly informed by the social-political situation of those years and by his efforts as a political militant. This can be seen in his experimentations of New Figuration Nuova Figurazione He uses, at the same time, painting, sculpture, and photography, playing with words and the three-dimensional nature of objects. In fact, his works are characterized by cycles of research in which he replaces each time both technique and approach to the work of art. In honor of his strong bond with his mother, starting in 1975 Cosimo Ricatto decides to add his mother’s maiden name to his signature as an artist; thus he begins to sign his works as Cosimo Di Leo Ricatto. Beginning in 1975 he embarks upon a more individualistic course, changing the types of work and mainly investigating the photographic medium.

New York
In the early 1980s, Cosimo di Leo Ricatto moves to New York and starts to intensely challenge his own output, inaugurating great experimentation of new languages. He is completely immersed in the new artistic-cultural scene and, after moving to SoHo and then to the East Village, he matures as an artist by associating with his peers during that historic period. In his works from the 1980s, he also includes Arte Povera as well as conceptual and minimal art in his installations though he strives for a decentralized union open to primary values: his works emphasize the importance played by the relationship between bodily functions and the sphere of the mind.

“I the artist turn my eyes to outer reality and the inner reality of my life; the language wishes to be clearly perceptible. Picking up surrealistic pure psychic automatism, I try to grasp and therefore stop that emotional instant when it rises to the surface without the intervention of ordering awareness […] then the world of physical existence does not present itself as a material of memory and not even interpretation, but rather as also with Rimabud, of surreal transformation. I believe that inspiration must be led to hallucination and the darkest and most private associations that can be imagined in an individual’s subconscious.” His works from the 1990s experience an evolution that coincides with a sort of distinct reaction through the manipulation of traditionally used materials.
 * “With the role of social catalyzer, he comments on the most intimate and complex aspects of life. Against that unnerved art, pleased in raising itself above everyday practices, he loves to report the difficulties we are forced to verify daily”..

His last works are characterized by pop languages filtered through the poetics of Raymond Russel as well as the art of Man Ray and Duchamp. In his last cycle of works, “Suspended,” he uses different techniques including oil painting, colored felt, and photography in the form of story boards: contemporary fotoromanzi in which he adds truncated sentences taken from interviews with Duchamp that have been re-elaborated beginning with Raymond Russel’s principles of writing. For this, the art historian and philosopher Arthur C. Danto edits the catalogue:
 * “Ricatto composes his arguments which he appropriates in elaborate graphic motifs that resemble John Cage’s mesostics – they resemble passages of concrete poetry […] he treats the topic like a logogram, which belongs to sound and sight at the same time, like the capital letters in medieval texts.”

Amsterdam
Since late 2006 he has lived and worked in Amsterdam. Following his appointments as an artist, he gradually stops exhibiting and decides to withdraw from public life though continuing as an artist privately. He abandons his stage name and once again resumes the name Cosimo Ricatto. In 2011 Cosimo di Leo Ricatto, together with his life and work partner Hanneke Huisman, opens C&H art space. C&H art space