A line will tell you a million things, a line is magical in that sense.
Ricardo can be described as a Renaissance person. He is an extraordinary pianist, a psychologist, but above all, an artist. His small works are like gems but his immense frescoes are breathtaking. His figures are classical. In the way that he draws bodies, feet, hands, heads, they have a classical resonance, almost echoing Michelangelo or Tintoretto. With his personal technique of painting with gouache on layers and layers of tissue paper, he has created extraordinary works that seem from another time. The transparency and the lightness of the material is in opposition with the gigantic figures, many times oppressed by even larger body parts. His works can be seen as dramatic, apocalyptic as if his men are bearing the whole weight of humanity.
In smaller works, there is a lightness. His lines flow with ease, sometimes conveying a layering of flowers and faces. Blue is one of his signature colours. He uses gouache and pigments, his pencil drawing emerging through the gouache, contrasted with watery golds.
In other works, his figures can look like Picasso’s. Men become minotaurs, his female faces like Picasso’s portraits, beautiful but with angled features. Echoes of Picasso and Cubism can be found in the works, but always with his personal style. In A Ravishing Muse, Homage to Picasso, held in the gallery in 2016, Ricardo copied the artist’s less known portraits. Almost identical, but in different sizes, he also recreated the period frames. The concept was to create almost an impossible situation where the viewer would hesitate for a few seconds if what he was seeing was real. It does take a master to copy another.
Ricardo was born in Froylan Palacios in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina. He read Psychology at the University of Rosario, having previously studied Painting at the Academia Fornells and Piano at the Conservatorio Chopin. He has worked on several major commissions including a vast fresco in the new Capella e Chiesa di Santa Maria della Misericordia, Terni, Umbria, Italy, in 2008. He has work in major public and private collections around the world.
Ricardo has shown with jaggedart since 2002.