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Painter and Sculptor - artist of the 20th-century Italian art
Aristide Gattavecchia was born in Cesena in 1907. His youth passed through two world wars that deeply marked him. His sensitive soul, eager for culture, led him from a very young age to take an interest in art and history, his two greatest passions.
Only after the war was he able to devote himself completely to painting and sculpture. He experimented with the most varied materials, moving from paper to plastic, from fabric to wood, and even from polystyrene to clay for his sculptures.
He dealt with powerful themes such as violence (of war), incommunicability, and solitude.
And also the themes of a society that changes rapidly and does not know how to face and organize changes appropriately: ecology, saving, consumerism.
And finally, themes that are more relevant than ever, such as homosexuality and discrimination.
He investigated the human soul, pushing himself to the rawest and most intimate observation.
We have works created from 1947 to 1994, a precious collection of artifacts from which the author's essential intent to spur his contemporaries to individual thought clearly emerges: he aspired to awaken people from the torpor of conformity by sending a message that invited them to be courageous, free, and bold.
Cultured and sensitive to the avant-garde of his time, he was able to maintain a stylistic identity that still makes his works immediately recognizable today.
His works evoke intense emotions of dismay, suffering, and a malaise of living conveyed through dark tones and a wholly original expressiveness in the field of figurative representation.
"Art is freedom and communicative power"
aristide@gattavecchia.it