Monte Tamaro
Riccardo Cordero
Riccardo Cordero was born in 1942 in Alba in the province of Cuneo (Italy). In 1965 he graduated with honors in sculpture from the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin. He began his career as a teacher at the Liceo Artistico in Turin. He later held the chair of sculpture at the School of Sculpture at the same academy until 2002. Besides lecturing and teaching, he has always worked as a sculptor with a preference for metal, steel and bronze. From the 1970s onwards, his artistic activity increased nationally and internationally. Noteworthy among his many works are «Disarticolare uncerchio» (Disarticulating a circle) and «Chakra», both of which are exhibited at the Città creative/lavorativa di Cordero in Turin. In 1993, he was asked by the Lookout Foundation in Pennsylvania, USA, to create a large ironwork in the foundation’s sculpture park. Inspired by this experience, he enthusiastically resumed the design of scale works on this return to his homeland. 2005 marked a turning point in his career. He was invited to Guilin in China to create his first work in Corten steel entitled «Comet», which was installed in the Shanghai Sculpture Park. This year (2021), he was one of the winners of the competition launched in Beijing for the 2022 Winter Olympics and was commissioned to create the 17-metre high sculpture entitled «New ET». He is also working on a new version of «Chakra» in Corten steel.
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The world of Riccardo Cordero
It is not easy to penetrate the meanders and communicative spirit of artistic creations, however attractive their message.
Paradoxically, it is often the silent and mysterious language of artistic works and their carefully chosen presentation that attract the uninitiated as well as specialists, the curious and art aficionados. This is precisely what happens with Riccardo Cordero thanks to the dozen monumental sculptures skillfully spread around the magnificent Monte Tamaro amphitheater.
«L’universo di Riccardo Cordero» (en. The world of Riccardo Cordero) is an exhibition that manifests a desire and a commitment to search for originality in sculpture, albeit monumental sculpture, in an environmental dimension. Cordero’s iron and steel sculptures consist of geometric shapes, the circle and the straight line, which intersect, collide, merge and draw unusual and fascinating paths in which the project and the unexpected, reason and instinct, memory and vision coexist. His works feature horizontal and vertical volumes that are real and ideal, in a perpetual evocation of a vacuum that breathes, pulsates, vibrates, mixed with the rough Piedmontese humus and with an underground austerity capable of guiding the artist in the strict formal layout devoid of superfluous detail in search of new expressive horizons beyond the dynamics of a traditional vision. A rare prerogative only granted to authentic artists.