Biographical notes

My name is Corrado Cataudella. I live and work in Bologna.
I was born in 1969 in Noto, a charming baroque town in the province of Syracuse, and I spent my childhood and adolescence in the neighboring town of Rosolini.
In 1988, after obtaining my scientific maturity, I left Sicily to undertake university studies. Since then, first for study and then for work, I have lived in several Italian cities: Turin, where I graduated in Mechanical Engineering, Rome, Palermo, Piacenza and Bologna.
Despite the technical studies, I have never neglected the innate love for art and the numerous forms of expression of creativity.
Therefore, I have grown in parallel both the interests for technical-scientific subjects and those for artistic subjects, such as music, singing, acting, sculpture, drawing and painting.
The passion for drawing and painting, in particular, has manifested itself very early, in childhood, and has accompanied me to this day.

At Studio “Mattioli”, in Bologna

Artistic training in painting

My pictorial training is mainly self-taught. An independent and passionate research, conducted away from schools and academies, and therefore freer and more autonomous, which protected me from scholastic and cultural conditioning and allowed me to develop a totally personal style.
Life experiences in different Italian cities have influenced the continuity and style of my artistic production. Thanks to new stimuli on the social and cultural level, they have contributed to enrich the creative humus, generating, at each new residence and at the end of the physiological period of acclimatization, powerful propulsive drives.
Significant and profitable, in this respect, were the following periods: 1998-2000 (Turin), 2007-2010 (Piacenza), 2014-2017 (Bologna).
During the years spent in Piacenza, I had the good fortune to attend some well-known artists close to the Piacenza School of Paduan surrealism, like the painter Giuseppe Schenardi, nephew of the famous Armodio, and I participated in various cultural initiatives in the field of painting and graphics under the aegis of the artist and art critic Maria Gioseffi, founder of the historic “Bottega d’Arte” of Sanremo.

During the current stay in Bologna, extremely synergistic has becoming the collaboration with the artist Giancarlo Mattioli, painter, restorer and art researcher.

Artistic expression

I paint spontaneously.  I often use strong colors and signs, following impetuous and overwhelming rhythms, usually letting myself be guided by a musical background chosen on the basis of the inspiration of the moment: music plays a fundamental role in my paintings and, besides giving me the “incipit”, suggests to me colors, movements, times and scenarios.
Mine is a surreal and sometimes dreamlike painting; it is also characterized by a high speed of execution, similar to an “automatic writing”: a painting so fast that it does not allow the reason and the conditionings of the intellect to intervene effectively, thus opening the doors to the free dimensions of the soul.
Over the years I have gradually freed myself from the constraints of form, space and content, to migrate towards increasingly informal and fast styles, preferring to the traditional oil colors those of acrylic type, because they are more suitable for a fast and impetuous painting.

Publications

• Art magazine “Boé Arte”, number January-February 2008, works: “Playing fantastically in Val Trebbia to the sound of the notes of Shearing”, “The fantastic game of Creation”;
• Art magazine “Art Now”, first number 2008, works: “Nel blu dipinto di blu”; “Chimere aliene”;
• Art Catalogue “Arte Collezionismo”, edition 2009, work: “”Angels of Val Trebbia who dance on the notes of Ivan Graziani”;
• Art magazine “Boé Arte”, number January-February 2009, work: “The games of the Goods”;
• Diary “Libro di Casa”, 2014 (by Giuseppe CRAPANZANO), work: “The fantastic game of Creation”;
• “La Casa ricamata”, short story book by Pina Magro, 2014, ed. Martorina:
  – back-cover image (“Exodus”);
  – internal illustrations (“Taurus”, “Exodus”, “Waiting kites);
• “La Dama in verde”, short story book by Pina Magro, 2017, ed. Youcanprint:
  – cover image (“La Dama in verde”);
  – internal images (“Star horse”, “To the informal (epic heroes)”, “The Trojan horse”, “The flight”, “Angels of the Holy Sepulcher”, “Star woman and man”, “Supermoon”);
• Sgarbi Collection – “Collection of Prints and Drawings”, 2018: “Skystorm” (archive file No. A011); “Black and white” (archive file No. A012).

Partecipation in some events

• International review of art “Erotika 2007”, Sanremo;
• Competition of extemporaneus art “La Pigna” edit. 2007, Sanremo;
• International Competition “Il Gioco nell’arte” edit. 2007, Sanremo;
• International review of art “Metti una canzone in cornice”, edit. 2008, Sanremo;
• International Prize  “Eredi del Rinascimento”, ediz. 2008, Firenze;
• 15th Art Competition “Trofeo Dalì”,  Malgrat de Mar, 2008, Spain;
• Art Prize “Artiste de Montmartre” edit. 2008, Mandelieu (Cannes), France;
• Art Prize “Premio Terna” ediz. 2008;
• International Competition “Il Gioco nell’arte” edit. 2008, Sanremo;
• Art Prize “Cinque Terre” edit. 2008, Portovenere (La Spezia);
• National review of art “Fiorin Fiorello”, edit. 2009, Sanremo;
• 16th Art Prize “Trofeo Dalì”, Roses, 2009, Spain;
• National review of art “I dialoghi del colore”, edit. 2009, Taormina;
• International review of art “Metti una canzone in cornice”, edit. 2009, Sanremo;
• “Art & Art”: double solo exhibition with the painter Giancarlo Mattioli at the “Teatro del Navile” – Spazio Arte, Via Marescalchi – ang. Via M. D’Azeglio, Bologna, from 6 December 2015 to 26 December 2015 (14 art works);
• “Art & Art”: solo exhibition at the theater of the Navile-Spazio Arte, Via Marescalchi – ang. Via M. D’Azeglio, Bologna, from 6 January to 31 March 2016 (25 art works);
• “Visioni dall’Invisibile”: solo exhibition at Piccinini Arte, Via Speranza 1/3, Bologna, from 07 to 21 April 2018 (70 art works).

About me…

“It is not easy to define in few words the essential characters of the pictorial, dreamlike and surreal universe of Corrado Cataudella. A first impression, looking at his paintings, one almost has the impression that the childish ingenuity of the images and the intense intensity of the colors are intended to catapult us into a fantastic adventure, in a fairytale world, as to make us recover that look full of charm that has belonged to each of us during childhood. However, passed this initial suggestion, pausing to observe his paintings with greater attention, we will notice that the colorful and exciting spectacle that comes to life before our eyes is anything but not the nostalgic reminiscence of a green age irretrievably lost.

Corrado Cataudella paints dreams, yes, but he does it with maturity of the artist who is far from wanting to recall the innocence of the vision that belongs to the fervid childhood imagination. His are dreams of a passionate man, a visionary painter capable of translating the deepest desires and the most hidden instincts into fantastic forms, terrestrial creatures and marine deities, like figures that emerge from the recesses of the mind claiming a possibility of expression.

The woman, as a dispenser of voluptuousness and strict guardian of her mystery, is the fulcrum around which the pictorial research of this artist revolves: nude, lithe, surrounded by pleasure, immersed in a dream of love, swept away in a universal vortex. These are the intense and magical women that Cataudella paints with all the passion and greed of the ‘voyeur’ who scrutinizes his nymphs with a curious and inquiring look, as if tormented by the insatiable desire to steal their soul and penetrate that enigma indecipherable that is the feminine mind. He not only intensely loves the women he portrays, but he is equally fascinated by the secrets they preserve and by that marvelous and disconcerting gift, which makes them fleshly and mystical creatures, displeasers of sensual pleasure and mothers who give life.

On the technical and formal side, the artist’s preference for this subject is resolved in bold color solutions, which attempt to yield, through the color, a colorful and symphonic universe in which the smells take shape and the sounds light up with hyperbolic nuances . Intense reds, deep blues, yellows full of light and sea water greens: colors like sounds, smells, inebriating aromas, melodious songs and endless silences.

It is on occasions like this that painting, by virtue of its visionary power, can make of this life the projection of a dream and of the dream itself the poetic face of life.”

Daniela Pronestì, June 2008

References

Piccinini Arte (F.lli Piccinini S.a.s.)
Via Speranza, 1/3 40133 - BOLOGNA
Mob. phone: +39 335231954 - 3492203257
Tel: +39 051.382616 www.piccininiarte.it

Giancarlo MATTIOLI (Bottega in Via dell'Abbadia)
Via dell'Abbadia, 2/b 40122 - BOLOGNA
Mob. phone: +39 338.395.37.94

Maria GIOSEFFI (ex Bottega d'Arte)
Via Canessa, 35 18038 - SANREMO (IM)
Mob. phone : +39 338.4364509 

Giovanbattista BEVACQUA (Giò ART)
Via Dell’Anfiteatro, 65 55100 - LUCCA
Mob. Phone: +39 340.7564647, +39 0583.464276