Rodolfo Ceccotti biography

Rodolfo Ceccotti is an Italian painter and engraver. He was born in 1945 in Florence where he still lives and works. Since he was a boy he dedicated himself to both painting and engraving, teaching himself. For the development of his poetics, his friendships with the poets Gatto, Gherardini and Betocchi and with the Florentine painters Capocchini, Vignozzi, Caponi, Scatizzi and Tirinnanzi, even if his points of reference will always be Constable and Turner, Borrani, Sernesi and Fattori, Monet and Friedrich . At just over twenty years old, Rodolfo Ceccotti won a scholarship for young artists from the Municipality of Florence. He was subsequently invited to the Fiorino exhibitions in 1971, 1973 and 1977.
In 1974 the artist held his first solo exhibition at the Galleria Inquadrature. In the same year he executed the stained glass windows for the church of San Silvestro in Tobbiana di Prato. From the following year he began to hold personal exhibitions in numerous Italian cities, until the prestigious invitation for a large anthology at the Olivetti Cultural Center in Ivrea in 1979. From here on he exhibited in numerous national and international collective exhibitions.
The characteristic themes of his painting are mainly landscapes characterized by horizons of open skies crossed by clouds, with profiles of trees, bushes or solitary farmhouses.
In 1984 he was among the five artists chosen by Leonardo Sciascia for the Milanese exhibition Artisti e Scrittori at the Rotonda della Besana and is invited to hold a personal exhibition at the Galleria La Tavolozza di Palermo.
After a trip to Sicily in 1986, his paintings and watercolors acquire new colors and shades and are tinged with brightly colored skies that cover deserted spaces.
Since 1970 Rodolfo Ceccotti he also began to dedicate himself to chalcographic activity, showing a particular predilection for etching. He refined his knowledge and technique by attending the laboratories of Marco Pistelli and Edi Grafica in Florence and producing over 115 matrices. The same landscape subjects present in his pictorial works recur in his engravings.
There are numerous exhibitions and awards which also take place in the engraving field, among which we remember in 1999 the participation in the collective exhibition of the artists linked to Il Bisonte in Tokyo at the Edogawa-Ku Center and the Yamagata Cultural Center. In 2000 he won the second edition of the Premio Leonardo Sciascia amateur d'estampes with the work Clouds through the branches.
Rodolfo Ceccotti also distinguished himself in the academic field by holding the professorship of Engraving Techniques at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence until 2010, the year of his retirement. Since 1996 he has been the educational director of the International School for Art Graphics Il Bisonte in Florence.