Renato Ranaldi

Renato Ranaldi was born in Florence in 1941. Thanks to his native city, during the 1960s he became friend with many artists such as Eugenio Miccini, Giuseppe Chiari, Ketty La Rocca, Adolfo Natalini, Gianni Pettena and Roberto Barni. This was the decade of his first trips to Europe (England, France) and to the United States, and he shared the Teatro Musicale Integrale experience (1967-69) with Andrea Granchi and Sandro Chia. In 1968 he experiences for the first time the cinematographic world with Senilix, and his first solo show, curated by Claudio Popovich, took place in the same year at Galleria La Zattera in Florence.
In 1971 he made the Timparmonico.
Following a personal path not influenced by the artistic trends of the time – minimalism, pop art, arte povera – by the 1970s he had an unconventional repertoire of works. It was the period when he became friend with the artists Fernando Melani, Luciano Fabro and the critic Bruno Corà.
In 1980 he made Archetipo, “form of forms”.
During the 1980s, he showed large-scale works in numerous public and private exhibitions (Modena: Galleria Mazzoli; Bologna: Galleria Fabibasaglia; Macerata: Pinacoteca; Florence: Sala d’Arme di Palazzo Vecchio, Villa Romana, Galleria Vivita; Malmö: Konsthall).
In 1988 the artist was invited by Giovanni Cadente to the XLIII Venice Biennale homaging him with a monographic sculpture room.
Since the 1990s a further transformation in his plastic production occurred. He started using zinc, copper and brass laminates to form surfaces or tapes with folds by mechanical modes.
In 1994 he began the series of different sizes of wooden frames, often painted in royal blue. In the decade of the 1990s he also created the series of “sculpted paintings”.
During these years the artist was the subject of solo exhibitions in private galleries and museums both in Italy (Ravenna: Pinacoteca comunale; Florence: Galleria Gentili; Perugia: Opera; Pistoia: Palazzo Fabroni; Carrara: Accademia di Belle Arti) and abroad (Los Angeles: Convention Center; Paris: Gran Palais, FIAC; Fresnes: Maison d’Art Contemporain Chaillioux; Vienna, Christine König Galerie).
In 2002 he printed the book La misura. La rotazione, il ritorno, a work that symbolizes the idea of the crisis of artistic identity, for the new series of books by AEIOU.
In recent years, among his exhibitions we can cite the 2005 show at Galleria Il Ponte in Florence, entitled Parusie (with no fewer than 826 small drawings), linked to the book edited by Bruno Corà, repertoire of the small drawing. During the same year at the CAMeC in La Spezia, he showed some large-scale sculpture-installations entitled Dispositivi per l’ora d’aria clearly displaying the feeling of ‘risk’ caused by putting the shapes on ‘edge’. Finally there was  Quijotesca, at the Instituto Cervantes in Paris, where he presented the work Bilico d’i’ciuho e la berva con i suoi arredi.
Moreover, he took part in important international art exhibitions: Exempla 2 (Teramo, Pinacoteca Civica); Grande segno cantato (Gubbio, Palazzo Ducale); in 2006, the XII Biennale internazionale di scultura La contemporaneità dell’arte (Carrara, Museo della scultura); Joke, Satire, Irony and Serious Meaning (Murska Sobota (Slovenia), Murska Sobota gallery of modern art); in 2009, Costanti del classico nell’Arte del XX e XXI secolo (Catania, Palazzo Valle); in 2010, Il grande gioco. Forme d’arte in Italia 1959-1972 (Milan, Rotonda della Besana).
Until 2016 he has therefore followed an alternating sequence of exhibitions in private and public spaces, amongt which we can mention: Fuoriasse Fuoriquadro, galleria Il Ponte and Arte torna arte, Galleria dell’Accademia (Florence, 2011 and 2012); Fuoricarta, Galleria Peccolo (Livorno, 2014); Au rendez-vous des amis, Palazzo Vitelli a S.Egidio and Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco (Città di Castello, 2015); Books + Papers, Christine Koenig Galerie (Vienna, 2015); La lotteria cieca del Trìscopo, Fondazione Mudima (Milan) and Angolari 1973/74 – Scioperii 2015 – Contenzioso 2016 galleria Il Ponte (Florence, 2016).
His constant exhibition activities are combined with the presentations of his books, such as Tebaide, Gli Ori Editore (2010, Celle – Pistoia); Calamaio mistico, Le Lettere Editore (2014, Biblioteca Marucelliana, Florence), as well as many essays published in art and literature journals.