Arnoldo Ciarrocchi

Arnoldo Ciarrocchi (Civitanova Marche 1916 – 2004)

Arnoldo Ciarrocchi was born in Civitanova Marche (Italy) in 1916. He enrolled in the libro d’Urbino School, and in 1938 he moved to Rome, where he worked as a pressman at the Chalcography Chamber for seventeen years.

His first engravings appear in the 1940s, among which are the White Prints and The Pines of Monte Mario. In 1947, Ciarrocchi exhibited his work at the Galleria del Secolo (Gallery of the Century) with Sadun, Scialoja, and Stradone, and in 1950 at the National Chalcography, he exhibited one hundred and twenty-seven prints from the engravings regarding the years spent at Urbino. During the span of his long career, Ciarrocchi obtained prestigious recognitions, among which, in 1951, he received an award for his engravings at the first International Art Biennial in San Paolo, Brazil and in 1952 he received the first award for the prints engraved at the Quadrennial in Rome. In 1955, Ciarrocchi received the first award for the etchings at the first Biennial of the Italian engravings in Venice.

At the 1962 Venice Biennial, he presented himself with ten scenes of Fontespina painted with watercolors in order to appear in 1976 at the Quadrennial in Rome with seven great scenes of Asola. In Jesi, in 1988, the year of engravings, he received the “Rosa Papa-Tamburi” award.

Ciarrocchi is considered to be among the best contemporary engravers as a result of his refined techniques and his outstanding graphic sensitivity. In order to emphasize the powerful component of light used in Ciarrocchi’s graphic signature, Valerio Volpini poetically wrote: “It is the Adriatic light that runs like a liquid through Ciarrocchi’s watercolors and engravings”.