Riccardo Schweizer (1925-2004), was an Italian contemporary artist experimenting in all fine arts: painting, sculpture, architecture and design. Versatile, creative and original, he was always seeking new ways of expression to satisfy his curiosity and desire for freedom that can be found in his extraordinary artworks.
Although deeply bound to his homeland (Trento, Italy), Riccardo Schweizer was fascinated by the Mediterranean, sunny and colorful Provence, where he met Pablo Picasso and the other now legendary French avant-garde artists of the time such as Chagall, Cocteau, Tamayo, Pignon, Eluard. Influenced by these artists but at the same time detached from any artistic trends, he was faithful to his idea that art must involve all aspects of reality and coincide as much as possible with everyday life. Combining avant-garde and tradition, Riccardo Schweizer created environments and objects of common use that he considered art.
Riccardo Antonio Svaizer (Mezzano, 31 August 1925 - Casez, 20 September 2004), was a painter, sculptor, photographer.
His technical-artistic studies began in Belluno and later in Venice at the Istituto d'Arte dei Carmini, directed by Giorgio Wenter Marini from Rovereto and where Carlo Scarpa also teaches.
He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, teaching painting there from 1954 to 1960 as an assistant to Bruno Saetti. In those years he lives in the house of the painter Vittorio Basaglia, who will be the stimulus and comparison for his work at that time. He frequents the cultural avant-garde circles of the city very assiduously and has the opportunity to get to know, among others, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, Gino Marinuzzi, Igor' Fëdorovič Stravinsky, Salvatore Quasimodo, Vittorio Klauser, Francesco Tentori, Virgilio Guidi, Diego Valeri, Rodolfo Pallucchini, Giuseppe Marchiori, Giuseppe Mazzariol, Elio Vittorini, Peggy Guggenheim, Guido Cadorin, Guido Perocco, Alberto Viani, Filippo de Pisis, Felice Carena, Gastone Breddo, Umberto Volante and Carmelo Zotti, who will take his place at the Academy in 1960.
As a designer he won the First Murano Prize in 1986. In 1989 he returned to Venice for a large personal exhibition at the Church of San Stae, on the occasion of which the Electa publishing house dedicated a rich monographic catalog to him edited by Luigi Lambertini. In the nineties he conceived and created numerous works on public and private commission. Awarded motu proprio by Carlo Azeglio Ciampi with the title of Cavaliere della Repubblica Italiana in 2001, he works between Cannes and Casez, in Val di Non, where he dies in September 2004.
