After attending the Scuola Libera del Nudo [Free School of the Nude], in his twenties he began painting at the same time as a musical activity that saw him perform with pop music orchestras in Italy and abroad.
After his first figurative paintings, he approached Informal painting, as Guarneri himself recounts in an interview with Giovanna Uzzani published in the catalogue of the anthological exhibition at Palazzo Pitti in 2004: 'Then came 1958 and painting became more important, more serious. I was still groping. Between 1958 and 1959, I found myself playing in The Hague. I fell in love with the self-portraits of the last Rembrandt. Nothing could be more informal. On heavy backgrounds as dark as night, flashes of lightning, flashes of gold appeared to me. So I began to be inspired by Rembrandt in my informal canvases, even though no one noticed. It was the light, it was those flashes that interested me. Even then I sensed the theme of light as central, but I still couldn't renounce matter and I thought of Wols and also Alechinsky. Then I realized that I felt the Cobras were too violent and instinctive, so I let myself be rather attracted by Licini's purity, by Klee's lyrical inventions. When I returned to Florence, I discovered that Fiamma Vigo had opened the new space in Via degli Artisti, a meeting place for abstract painters and adventurous young people. The opportunity arose for an exhibition in '59, it was entitled Baldi - Fallani - Guarneri - Masi - Verna. Five Informals in Florence.”
Guarneri's debut exhibition saw him still tied to the Informal sphere but, as the artist says, these were “... fervent years, everything was as if overwhelmed by experiences, by discoveries. In 1959 I went to Germany for the first time, to Dusseldorf. I was still painting informally. I began to visit the studios of those painters who I felt were closest to my research. Northern Europe then appeared to me as an extraordinary forge, a laboratory, an exciting network of experimentation, a living, nervous, cosmopolitan reality. I met Otto Piene, Peter Brüning, Hansjorg Glattfelder. Then also Raimond Girke and Winfred Gaul. I went to their studios and we became friends, even though I was younger.”
His first personal exhibition was at the Galerie de Posthoorn in The Hague, in 1960, the year in which Guarneri was also at Abstracte Italiensee Kunst in Ostend and at Modern Paintings of Italy at the Rose Marie Gallerie in Taipei, while 1961 saw his personal exhibition with Claudio Verna at the Galleria L'Indiano in Florence and 1962 at the Galleria San Matteo in Genoa.
In 1962, Guarneri began to take an interest in color as light, sign as painting and the problems inherent in visual perception. From this moment onwards, sign, light and color are identified, substantiating a poetic world of acute sensitivity and constituting, albeit in its different phases, the thread of a decidedly personal research. The first very clear paintings born: the space is marked by luminous variations and the surfaces are treated predominantly in pencil. These artworks were revealed for the first time in 1963 in his solo exhibition at La Strozzina in Palazzo Strozzi. It is Guarneri again who remembers the overcoming of Informal and the change in his research in the early 1960s: “Frequenting German friends offered me confirmation, suggested ways out of Informal, encouraged me in my search for painting. In my canvases, there were already new proposals of light and the first effects of transparency. Then my informal abstract paintings began to lighten and the search for light renewed in me the love for the landscape of the North, in Germany, in Holland, in Finland, that crystalline light, without humidity, without weight. That is how I lightened the tones more and more, subtracting matter, decanting, I arrived at the silence of white. But it was not a sudden choice.”
In 1963, together with Giancarlo Bargoni, Attilio Carreri, Arnaldo Esposto and Gianni Stirone, Guarneri formed the Tempo 3 Group, whose formal program, starting from the lesson of Rothko and gestalt theories, hoped to overcome the opposition between Concretism and Informal by posing itself as the third tempo of abstract painting.
From 1964 onwards, the work acquired a more rigorous and geometric structure: “I allowed myself to be won over by the geometric pattern of rhombi or squares repeated in imperceptible asymmetry, which unfolds through carefully calculated successions. An effect of eurythmy is achieved with the help of colors, or rather colored lights, which replace the old timbral color, bringing about effects of poetry through the use of the primary elements of light and rhythm of space. [...] I also had in mind the homage to Josef Albers' square, with those effects of dynamic tension, of compression, that arose from the pattern of squares organized not around the same centre; for Albers, too, the square meant purity of form and an escape from emotional implications, in search of a basic module in relation to its multiples. But for me Albers was too logical, too geometric, I preferred to be more ambiguous, I did not have his faith in pure form, I came from existentialism.”
Guarneri's research, by then mature and original, was rewarded with an invitation to the XXXIII Venice Biennial (where he shared a room with Agostino Bonalumi and Paolo Scheggi) and to the exhibition Weiss auf Weiss at the Kunstalle in Berne, while his participation in the V Paris Biennial and the Nuova Tendenza [New Trend] exhibitions were in 1967. Numerous personal exhibitions were held in Italy and Europe in the 1960s: at Galleria Gritti in Venice in 1964, Galleria II Bilico in Rome in 1965, Galleria il Paladino in Palermo in 1966, Galleria La Carabaga in Genoa and Galleria 3A in Lecce in 1967, Studio d'informazione Estetica in Turin in 1968 and Galleria Flori in Florence in 1969. It was precisely from 1969 that painting “continued to refine itself. Almost white paintings were born, which could only be read by means of prolonged observation that provoked a perceptive refinement. [...] colors were the result of changing, luminous transparencies and were transformed into color-light. The signs had been transformed and, from individual and significant, had become lighter, denser and more regular, mere transcription of an imperceptible movement of the wrist. [...] But in the end the structure must continually come to terms with a light that consumes and undoes it.”
In 1972 Guarneri held a first anthological exhibition of over sixty artworks that closed a decade of activity at the Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster, while personal exhibitions at the Galleria Peccolo in Livorno, the Galleria La Polena in Genoa, the Galleria Morone 6 in Milan and the Galerie Loehr in Frankfurt also took place in the same year. This was followed by a solo exhibition in 1973 at the Galleria del Cavallino in Venice and those in 1974 at the Galleria Godel in Rome and at the Galerie December in Münster; that at Galerie December in Dusseldorf in 1976 and at Galerie Artline in The Hague in 1978. Among the various exhibitions are the participations in the Quadriennale in Rome in 1973, the Biennial in Milan in 1974 and the historical exhibitions on Italian art: L'immagine attiva [The active image] at the Rotonda della Besana in Milan in 1971 and, in the same year, XX Mostra Internazionale del Fiorino [XX International Fiorino Exhibition] at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence; Europa/America, l'astrazione determinata 1960-76 [Europe/America, the determined abstraction] at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Bologna in 1976; Linee della ricerca artistica in Italia 1960-1980 [Lines of artistic research in Italy 1960-1980] at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome in 1981.
“Late 1970s. A sense of dissatisfaction took hold of me with respect to my previous work, the paintings were now coming along too well, they were too perfect, I felt the need for a rebellion, the need to find a way out of such implacable rigour was maturing within me. [...] I kicked geometric rigour to the curb, I abandoned myself to the effects of chance and stain, I agreed to let what I felt was the 'romantic' and 'sentimental' aspect of my inspiration prevail. [...] The first appreciable results of the new course of my painting came around 1982. The innumerable watercolour stains were superimposed on each other, filtered by a tissue of Japanese rice paper that I glued onto the canvas and used instead of the usual preparation.
The results of this research found space in the exhibition entitled Equilibrio, held in May 1984 at the Palazzo Pretorio in Certaldo (in collaboration with the GNAM in Rome), where Guarneri exhibited together with Aricò, Uncini, Conte, Lorenzetti and Napoleone.
"At the end of the 1980s, it happened that I got tired of the papers. The work was long and the craftsmanship was boring, it absorbed me too much. So I decided to return to canvas, but without giving up watercolor, which I liked for its lightness. [...] And so came the 1990s, during which I was confirmed in my ideas, in my way of understanding painting, sometimes with a request for geometric rigor in the structure, and sometimes with freer, more rhythmic and chromatic moments.
In 2000, the artist had faced a totally new experience, realizing the project for the 24 m2 mosaic of the Lucio Sestio underground station in Rome.
During these years, the artist was invited to important exhibitions on the history of Italian art in Italy and abroad: Astratto - Secessioni astratte in Italia dal dopoguerra al 1990 [Abstract - Abstract Secessions in post-war Italy to 1990] at the Galleria Civica di Verona in 1990; Arte in Italia 1956-1968 [Art in Italy 1956-1968] at the Museo Civico di Conegliano Veneto in 1995; Die andere Richtung der Kunst. Abstrakte Kunst Italiens ‘60-’90 at the Kunsthalle Cologne in 1997; Continuità. Arte in Toscana 1945-2000 [Continuity. Art in Tuscany 1945-2000] at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence in 2002.
In 2004, the anthological exhibition Contrappunto luce was held at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna of Palazzo Pitti in Florence. On the occasion, a catalogue was published with critical essays by Giovanna Uzzani and Maria Grazia Messina, statements by the artist and an anthology of critical writings, still today a reference text for Guarneri's work.
Since the mid-2000s, in the context of a renewed critical interest in analytical painting, exhibitions dedicated to its protagonists have flourished in Italy and abroad, to which Riccardo Guarneri (one of the first exponents of this artistic current) is punctually invited.
In 2007 he was in Milan, at the Palazzo della Permanente, for the exhibition Pittura Analitica. I percorsi italiani 1970-1980 [Analytical Painting. Italian Paths 1970-1980] and in numerous private galleries. In 2015 he is among the artists in Un'idea di pittura. Astrazione analitica in Italia [An idea of painting. Analytical Abstraction in Italy], 1972-1976 at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Udine and in 2016 he participated in two other group exhibitions: Pittura Analitica. Anni '70 [Analytical Painting. The 1970s], at the Mazzoleni Art gallery in London, and Gli anni della pittura analitica. I protagonisti, le opere, la ricerca [The years of analytical painting. The protagonists, the works, the research] at the Palazzo della Gran Guardia in Verona. In 2017, he was invited to other exhibitions on analytical painting: Pittura Analitica ieri e oggi [Analytical Painting Yesterday and Today] at the Mazzoleni Gallery in Turin, Pittura analitica: origini e continuità [Analytical Painting: Origins and Continuity], held in the two venues of Villa Contarini (Piazzola sul Brenta, PD) and the Rocca di Umbertide.
These years also saw Guarneri as the protagonist of important solo exhibitions in Italy and abroad, including his participation in the historical exhibitions: Pittura Aniconica [Aniconic Painting] at the Casa del Mantegna in Mantua in 2008; Il Grande Gioco. Forme d'arte in Italia 1947-1989 [The Great Game. Forms of Art in Italy 1947-1989] at the Rotonda della Besana in Milan in 2010 and Percorsi dell'arte italiana [Paths of Italian Art] at the Vaf-Stiftung, Mart di Trento e Rovereto in 2011.
In 2017, recognition came to the artist with an invitation from Christine Macel to the 57th International Art Biennial in Venice entitled Viva Arte Viva, fifty years after his first Biennial in 1966.
In 2018, he is invited to the exhibition 100% Italia. Cent'anni di capolavori [100% Italy. One hundred years of masterpieces], held at the Museo Ettore Fico in Turin. In 2019, the Museo del Novecento in Milan included a artwork by Guarneri as part of the museum's reorganization, inaugurating a new exhibition itinerary. The Museo del Novecento Firenze, instead, dedicates a solo exhibition to him.
In 2021, four of his artworks will become part of the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Riccardo Guarneri has taught painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Carrara, Bari, Venice and Florence and is also Academic Emeritus for the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence, the city where he has always lived and worked.
