Raffaello Eroico

For thirty years "Rafferoico" (Raffaello Eroico) has been painting a single continuous work: numbered, rarely titled. Born in Naples in 1967, he lives and works in Toulouse.

He left school at fifteen for graphic design and served as a military photographer at eighteen, then spent a decade as a professional photographer in the last fully analogue era. That formation — from the American f/64 group to Ugo Mulas's Verifiche — still governs everything he paints.

The pivot was the pixel. In 1996 he made it his subject in a series of transmedial images; the same year, his modular decoration system was patented, put into production by an Italian ceramics manufacturer and shown at CERSAIE, Bologna. He then moved against the migration of the image into the digital: from 2004 painting became his primary medium, taken up in its most consumed and least original form — oil on canvas — precisely so that nothing would distract from the mark itself. Manual work as the deliberate antithesis of technology.

Two constants hold the œuvre together. The square, inherited from the 6×6 negative: a hortus conclusus in which the horizontal of the immanent and the vertical of the transcendent are given equal measure. And the numbering, which asserts the cor...

Graphic design training – Italy
10 years as a professional photographer – Italy / France
Self-directed research in contemporary painting – from 2004, focusing on the painterly language of the Baroque age and its dialogue with modern and contemporary values. Neapolitan roots as a key influence.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2023 – “Cahier d’un faune rêveur – Le confort des étranges”, Toulouse, France
2019 – “Quel che è stato, è, sarà”, curated by Maria Savarese, Palazzo Fondi, Naples, Italy
2014 – “Burning in an Uranic River”, DA WANG Culture Highland, Shenzhen, China
2013 – “MMXIII – Peintures kontemporaines ou pas”, Mix’art Myrys, Toulouse, France
2011 – “Onzeonzeonze – Metamorphoses in the ‘post-digital’ painting”, Mix’art Myrys, Toulouse, France
2005 – “BESTIA”, Neoartgallery, Rome, Italy
2003 – “aov#nap”, AltrovunqueNapoli, Ambulacro di San Domenico Maggiore, Naples, Italy (exhibition financed by the Naples Commune, “Maggio dei Monumenti 2003”)

GROUP EXHIBITIONS (selection)

2004 – “La gabbia della fantasia”, Pennabilli, Italy
2004 – “Three days before”, Neoartgallery, Rome, Italy
2002 – “Globalisation”, Ente Cassa di Faetano, Republic of San Marino
1998 – “C’era una volta il futuro”, Musei di Porta Romana, Milan, Italy

PUBLIC ART PROJECTS

1996 – AndanteConMoto (design), “Graphic modular decoration system”: patent acquired by Ceramiche Omega SpA, exhibited at CERSAIE 1996 (International Exhibition of Ceramic Tile), Bologna, Italy

PRIZES/RECOGNITIONS

2008 – Work selected and published in the international competition Celest...