Ugo Riva was born in Bergamo on 9 August 1951. Since his youth and during his high school studies, he developed a strong interest in figurative art which soon gave way, starting from 1977, to an interest in sculpture to which he dedicated himself during his intense career. A critical reading of contemporary society and the role that every artist is called to play within it, through the creation of works that look to the ancient, to mythology, to the epic, to a style inspired by neoclassicism. It almost seems like an oxymoron and instead it is what Ugo Riva, a sculptor from Bergamo who quickly became an Italian name known throughout the world, promises to do with his art. Like his best-known piece, Anima Mundi, that headless angel installed in Bergamo in the very central Largo Porta Nuova, and which restores the fragile and brief sense of human destiny, the spirituality hoped for after the end, the transience of earthly matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00abMaking sculpture is a complex thing. The word, added to the form, helps to know it better, to understand everything", is the thought of Riva, who does not delegate the important steps of the composition of his creatures to anyone and personally takes care of each stage of the process because, for his same admission, he is someone who does not entrench himself inside the ivory towers of intellectuals but prefers to "get his hands dirty".<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From the sketch to the finishing touches, Riva entrusts only the specific moment of the casting to other professionals. Everything, even the waxes and patinas, bear his signature, so that each work is an absolute unique piece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His sculptures are not decorative objects to which a label can be added, but dialoguing matter that takes on a form at the end of a journey that is first emotional and then structural. It is no coincidence that Riva includes Michelangelo among his "putative masters", and not that of the canonical perfection of David or the Vatican Piet\u00e0, but that of the Rondanini Piet\u00e0 and the lacerating empathy of incompleteness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The dialogue between the themes and needs of the present with a look at the past is constant: Riva is not a sculpture who has chosen to compose his works with experimental substances and technological additions. It gives allegorical meaning to the result of the union of materials such as bronze or polychrome terracotta, demonstrating that it is always the artistic need and the interpretation desired by the creative hand that choose the ideal expressive means for contemporaneity, and not the need to respond to some abstract \u201cidea\u201d of what it means to be an artist today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Riva does not disdain forays into other styles and forms of expression, such as drawing: \u00abMy great passion. As Pontormo stated: \u201cThe first expression of the soul\u201d. From the caves of Altamira to Picasso nothing is more true, strong and sincere than a simple sign on the wall or a piece of paper." All at the service of his investigation, the one to be carried out into the mysteries of the human soul and the meaning of life. It is no coincidence that among Riva's favorite subjects there are, in addition to angelic creatures - bodies with wings to symbolize the double link between the earthly and celestial dimensions - also women, as the maximum expression of nature as bearers of the possibility to give life, to allow the cycle of the world to complete itself, to complete existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even today, when his works are exhibited in galleries all over the world, Riva continues his investigation incessantly, in his laboratory-foundry in Bergamo, where it all began and where a young man decided, with courage, to abandon the \u201cpermanent position\u201d in the bank to follow his true vocation: that of an artist of his present, year after year.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":14385,"parent":0,"template":"","tags":[],"ordine-alfabetico":[724],"class_list":["post-14382","artisti","type-artisti","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sangiorgioarte.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artisti\/14382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sangiorgioarte.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artisti"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sangiorgioarte.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/artisti"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/test.sangiorgioarte.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artisti\/14382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14387,"href":"https:\/\/test.sangiorgioarte.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artisti\/14382\/revisions\/14387"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sangiorgioarte.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sangiorgioarte.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sangiorgioarte.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14382"},{"taxonomy":"ordine-alfabetico","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sangiorgioarte.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ordine-alfabetico?post=14382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}