Riccardo Licata

Riccardo Licata was born in Turin in 1929. After a brief stay in Paris, his family moved to Rome where they stayed until 1945.

Riccardo Licata moved to Venice the following year. The young man studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice (1947-1955). His first personal exhibition will be organized in Venice in 1951.

He obtained a grant from the French government in 1957 and moved to Paris where he studied engraving in the workshops of Friedlaender, Hayter (Atelier 17), and Henri Goetz. Licata becomes Gino Severini's assistant at the Italian Art School in Paris. In 1961, he was appointed professor of mosaic at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, professor of plastic arts at the Sorbonne and of engraving at the Académie Goetz (Paris) in 1969, then, from 1972 and until 1992, will hold the same position at the International School of Experimental Engraving in Venice and at the American School of Architecture in Fontainebleau.

With his great experience in art, Riccardo Licata himself became a painter, engraver, mosaicist, sculptor, scenographer and began to exhibit in Venice and Florence with the group of Young Abstract Painters.

Licata's work will be shown in more than 300 exhibitions organized in 35 different countries. From 1952, it will be exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the San Paolo Biennale (Brazil), Tokyo, Paris, Ljubljana, Alexandria (Egypt) and at the Rome Quadrennials, at the Milan Triennals, just like in the main Parisian salons.