Arnaldo Ricciardi Italien, b. 1954

Galerie von Opel is pleased to present the work of Swiss-Italian artist Arnaldo Ricciardi, whose artistic practice is rooted in a nuanced exploration of colour, perception, and abstraction. A graduate of the School of Applied Arts in Lugano, Ricciardi’s early artistic formation was significantly shaped by his encounter with painter Leo Maillet (1902–1990), whose influence encouraged a lifelong engagement with the expressive possibilities of non-representational painting.

Ricciardi’s work is abstract yet consistently anchored in observation and the processing of real-world impressions. His paintings emerge from lived experience, filtered through a visual language. Colour is Ricciardi’s primary medium of expression. In each work, the development and modulation of colour is made visible, allowing the viewer to follow its transformation across the canvas. Often, a single dominant tone expands across the surface, overlaid with transparent or more saturated layers that build depth and rhythm. At the edges of his compositions, one can trace the layering and application of pigments, while in the centre, expansive fields of colour unfold – at times calm and diffuse, at other times sharply contrasting and vibrantly charged.

Ricciardi’s palette ranges from soft transitions to bold juxtapositions, often employing intense reds, deep blues, and radiant yellows. Some compositions reveal underlying colour strata left deliberately exposed, introducing a sense of temporal layering and visual complexity.

Carefully constructed and intuitively balanced, Ricciardi’s paintings convey a contemplative clarity. Though abstract in form, they offer the viewer an inner logic – a structure that allows for orientation without dictating meaning. The works invite slow looking and open interpretation, encouraging a personal engagement with surface, colour, and space.

Through his subtle yet rigorous approach to abstraction, Arnaldo Ricciardi has developed a visual language that is both restrained and resonant – one that rewards close attention and reflects a deep commitment to the poetics of seeing.