The “kouroi” of Carla Rigato

The production of this exhibition, entirely conceived of for the space of the art gallery, was a real challenge for the artist, Carla Rigato. For the exhibition coordinated by architect and cultural director of Spazio Thetis in Venice, Antonietta Grandesso, Carla Rigato created seven large canvases 2.20 metres high and 80 centimetres wide.

“Seven boys,” explains the coordinator, “who are not only the result of years of work and study, but above all reflect beauty and unity: their kouroi.”
The term kouroi (plural of κοῦρος in Greek "boy") refers to Greek statues depicting naked boys in an upright position from the archaic period of Egyptian influence (mid-seventh to mid-sixth century). They were young boys at the peak of their physical development, whose nudity represented the virtue of courage and who were both a symbol of physical and moral strength as well as a symbol of inner balance and harmony.

Biography

Carla Rigato's art is an expression of our time. With passion and dedication, she has explored the essential sources of twentieth century painting, from expressionism to abstractionism. She captures those features that best convey a sense of modern-day life. From the foundations she has acquired, she embarks on a new kind of exploration of a modern, musical and flexible mode of expression, characterised by distinctive notes of colour, thus stimulating a unique interpretation.

The artist was trained by painter, Dolores Grigolon, and professor of aesthetics, Richard Demei. Since 2004, she attends the Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg (which was founded by Oskar Kokoschka in the 1950s), and has worked with international masters such as Jacobo Borges, Michael Morgner, the Zhou Brothers, Mohammed Abla, and Hubert Schneibi.

The results are works that are not bound by space and time, which have complete freedom of design with dense and almost tangible brushstrokes: a memory full of sensations, emotions, and suggestions captured on canvas. At the same time, the choice of colours is sometimes violent, dramatic, corrosive; sometimes soft, lyrical, or melodic. Even when language emerges, it is still transfigured by colour, by the freedom of brushstrokes, by the intensity of emotion, by the poetics of inwardness. Carla Rigato's painting is flesh and blood, spirit and breath … it is fire, air, earth, and water. Each canvas exposes its soul and gives the viewer spaces to meditate and look inward.

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