1965-1967 OPTICAL B/W; COMPLEMENTARIES

This was the period in which the image found its constructive rule, that of the expressive potential of a module repeated and gradually clarified in a series of drawings, at first in the form of sketches and later governed by instruments of measurement. The “cell” is proposed both in identical and in different repetitions, thereby creating the overall shape of a painting. The inaugural value attributed to the module must be contrasted with its multiplication and transfer, as a paradoxically redundant figure that nevertheless distinguishes an individual work.
The choice of two colours is equivalent to the erasure of every reference, be it naturalistic or architectural. The reference to the European experiments in optical and kinetic research at the turn of the 1960s is evident. Rather than in the instability and iridescence of a figure, Rizzato is always more interested in its architectural nature. These were the years in which he worked in mutual contact with another artist in the Milan circle, Oliviero Berni, with whom he interwove a positive working dialogue.
The passage from the elementary black and white contrast to that of primary colour, and subsequently of paired complementary colours, always associated with the presence of black and white, witnessed a period of enrichment and verification of the expressive scope for construction, developed with the aid of an always disciplined but fuller palette.
An important episode was Rizzato’s participation in the activities of the interdisciplinary research group, Il parametro, in Milan. And one of the fruits of his collaboration with Miro Cusumano was their combined creation, in 1968/69, of the work, Interata 1.

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