The Crisis of the Ego in the Paintings and Drawings of Gian Carlo Riccardi: Brief Psychological Reflections

The main purpose of this study is to analyse and examine some of the paintings of the Italian avant-garde artist Gian Carlo Riccardi. Our work will focus in particular on a psychological study of the paintings and drawings realised by the artist. Our study basically focuses on the compositions created between the 1980s and 1990s and the graphic works executed in the 2000s. The first category examines certain works characterised by intense abstractionism. The pictorial material used by Gian Carlo Riccardi is manipulated, contaminated and destroyed, leaving only ‘relics’, symbolising a crisis of the ego. The second category analyses the drawings that make up the ‘Bestiary’ collection. Gian Carlo Riccardi imprints on the blank sheets, the deformity and physical and moral decadence of the humanity represented, a bestiary humanity. This research aims to show how, through the works examined, Gian Carlo Riccardi synthesises individual and collective anguish through heterogeneous pictorial interventions, within which the gesture lacerates and lays bare the underlying ‘cutaneous’ tissue, and illustrations where the sign traces the outlines of naked bodies revealing the scabrous reality of the commodification of flesh.