Rodolfo Ceccotti biography

Rodolfo Ceccotti is an Italian painter and engraver. He was born in 1945 in Florence, where he still lives and works. From a young age, he dedicated himself to both painting and engraving, training as a self-taught artist. The friendships with poets Gatto, Gherardini, and Betocchi and with Florentine painters Capocchini, Vignozzi, Caponi, Scatizzi, and Tirinnanzi were decisive for the development of his poetics, although his points of reference have always been Constable and Turner, Borrani, Sernesi and Fattori, Monet and Friedrich. Just over twenty years old, Rodolfo Ceccotti won a scholarship for young artists from the Municipality of Florence. He was later 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 made the stained glass windows for the church of San Silvestro in Tobbiana di Prato. From the following year, he began holding solo exhibitions in numerous Italian cities, culminating in the prestigious invitation for a large retrospective at the Olivetti Cultural Center in Ivrea in 1979. From then on, he exhibited in numerous national and international group 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 Milan exhibition Artists and Writers at the Rotonda della Besana and was invited to hold a solo exhibition at the Galleria La Tavolozza of Palermo.
After a trip to Sicily in 1986, his paintings and watercolors acquired new colors and shades and were tinged with skies of bright colors covering deserted spaces.
Since 1970 Rodolfo Ceccotti has also devoted himself to printmaking, showing a particular preference for etching. He refined his knowledge and technique by attending the workshops of Marco Pistelli and Edi Grafica in Florence, producing over 115 plates. The same landscape subjects present in his paintings recur in his engravings.
Numerous exhibitions and recognitions follow also in the engraving field, including the 1999 participation in the collective exhibition of 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 Leonardo Sciascia amateur d’estampes Prize with the work Clouds through the branches.
Rodolfo Ceccotti also distinguished himself in the academic field by holding the chair of Engraving Techniques at the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence until 2010, the year of his retirement. Since 1996, he has been the educational director of the International School for Artistic Graphics Il Bisonte of Florence.