Rodolfo Ceccotti was born in 1945 in Florence, Italy, where he still lives and carries out his activity as painter and printmaker. After teaching in Carrara he became lecturer in Printmaking Techniques at the Fine Art Academy in Florence. Since 1996 he is also Director of Studies at the Scuola Internazionale per la Grafica d'Arte Il Bisonte in Florence. Autodidatta, si dedica alla pittura fin da ragazzo; decisiva è stata l'amicizia con i poeti Gatto, Gherardini e Betocchi e con i pittori fiorentini Capocchini, Vignozzi, Caponi, Scatizzi e Tirinnanzi., ma i suoi maestri ideali sono da sempre Constable e Turner; Borrani, Sernesi e Fattori; Monet e Friedrich. In his early 20s he won a scholarship for young artists awarded by the Florence City Council. In 1971, 1973 and 1977 he was invited to the Florin exhibitions. He held his first personal exhibition at the gallery ‘Inquadrature’ in 1974. In the same year he designed the windows for the Church of San Silvestro in Tobbiana di Prato. Since 1975 he started to hold personal exhibitions in numerous Italian cities until, in 1979, he received a prestigious invitation to an antological exhibition at the Olivetti Cultural Centre in Ivrea. To this followed a number of national and international collectives. By this time the themes of his work had already developed: landscaper with open skies, trees and isolated farmhouses. In 1979 Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti put him in charge of the drawing course at the International Art University in Florence. In 1984 In 1984 he was amongst the five artists chosen by Leonardo Sciascia for the exhibition ‘Artists and Writers’ held at the Rotonda of the Besana in Milan and was invited to hold a personal exhibition at the gallery ‘La Tavolozza’ in Palermo. In 1994 Tommaso Paloscia lists him in the Mondadori Catalogue of Graphic Art. A turning point for his work was the trip to Sicily in 1986, after which his watercolour and oil paintings presented skies with vivid colours above deserted spaces. The works of this period were exhibited in two personal exhibitions at the gallery Pananti (Florence) in 1987 and at ‘La Tavolozza’ (Palermo) in 1988. In 1990 he held a personal/one-man show in Piombino, and in 1991 he exhibited a number of his work togrther with those of Piero Vignozzi at the Fortezza Doria in Portovenere. Amongst the most prestigious printmaking exhibitions are the following: "The image of the Sign 1940- 1990" at Villa Renatico Martini in Monsummano Terme (Pistoia); "Ten Years of Acquisitions 1984-1990" at the ‘Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe’ in the Uffizi; "Signs of Tuscany " in Chianciano; "Firenze 4th of November 1966 , thirty years later " at the Gallery ‘Il Bisonte’, Firenze; "III Etching Biennal" at Rotary Club of Acqui Terme, Ovada; "XIV International Biella Prize". In1997 he carried out eight etchings for the poetry volume "Mentira" by Dedy Luziani, Il Bisonte Editions. In 1998 the Gallery ‘Il Bisonte’ hosted an antological exhibition of his work as painter and printmaker. In 1999 he participeted to a collective exhibition of the artists linked with ‘Il Bisonte’ in Tokyo at the Edogawa-Ku Center and the Yamagata Cultural Center. In 2000 he won the second edition of the Prize Leonardo Sciascia amateur d’estampes with the work ‘Nuvole attraverso i rami’, which consequently entered in the Civic Collection of Prints Achille Bertarelli in the Palazzo Sforzesco in Milan.

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