Michel Rico (France)

The French sculptor Michel Rico lives and works in Echilleuses in the Gâtinais region (France). He was born in 1946 in Biarritz and spent his childhood in Dieulefit, where he discovered the art of metalwork. During the period Rico spent on the island of Saint Germain and in Issy Moulineaux, he worked in steel and then in bronze, acquiring an almost unique technicality with the forge. He established his own foundry within his studio.

The artist has long worked in steel and bronze, in a permanent search for balance between light, tension and energy. His thoughts translated into metal portray a freedom of the material in space. Man, his strengths and weaknesses, his relation in the cosmos, the human dynamic, encounters with others, are the themes which guide Rico's work. He searches for harmony and beauty, and communicates this to the viewer by means of the sculpture.

Rico's work immediately grasps the attention of the viewer with its mystic aesthetic, providing a spiritual experience. He experiments with space and height, the ether and the material, in a balance mastered by precarious shapes confronted with space. The artist renders abstraction as an essential expressiveness, which draws the spectator into his work.