"Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers – and never succeeding."
Marc Chagall
According to Aristotle, art is an imitation of nature. But there has always been another path that the artist can take, the one that extract the intrinsic beauty of nature.
Phidias, the greatest artist of ancient Greece, discovered that some algorithms that describe the geometric dimensions of reality in mathematical form could be applied to drawing to "extract beauty": in particular the golden section - or divine proportion - is an algorithm that if used - for example - in the construction of a rectangle makes the viewer say, infallibly, that that rectangle is more beautiful than the others. Seeing is believing.
The art of the Renaissance that was inspired by the great classical tradition used the golden proportion in painting and architectural drawings, with the artistic results we know. And it’s because of their ability to dialogue with nature and its laws, the great Renaissance artists were almost always great craftsmen, indeed they were great artists precisely because, first of all, great artisans.
The creative gesture of Riccardo Monte, architect, designer, artist and maker, is part of this ancient tradition of the Renaissance Homo Faber and is manifested in his ability to see beauty in the folds of nature and be able to reveal it.
For Riccardo, the wood is a great book that through its grain, knots, the agglomeration of its fibers speaks of the invincible force of time, of the eternal transformation of matter in which nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything is transformed.
So, his collection of unique pieces, all "cut" around the unrepeatable personality of the single tree trunk, transfer, through a simple cutting board or stool, the strength, charm and mystery of nature.
Riccardo speaks with wood through ancient, almost alchemical techniques which dialogue with the raw material and other ancestral elements: iron, fire, water.
“Nature loves to hide itself”, wrote Heraclitus. That quote looks more like the verse of a poem than a philosophical principle, but it is actually from that sentence, almost three thousand years ago, that the exciting journey of Western philosophical thought to understand reality begins.
But an artist does not need to understand, because he has already seen.
For this reason Riccardo's art never ceases to excite us, and to excite our customers who have chosen his products to bring a little poetry to their homes.
The skelly cubes, among the most representative products of his production, have flown to Italy, Europe and America and have been chosen by excellent interiors such as Charles & Co.
And even the international media wanted to give voice to this Italian talent, such as Deco Home (Germany), Country Living - Modern Rustic (UK), The Neighbor (Korea) and Frame with the City Quitters book.
credits_photographer Cristina Galliena Bohman
credits_Country Living - Modern Rustic Magazine