Davide Rivalta

“Their gaze, the animal gaze, both disquiets and reassures. It redefines the perimeter of our living in the asphalt jungle and re-establishes an interspecific relationship not mediated by soft toys’.

Cristiana Collu

Director of Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome

Hypermaremma is pleased to announce the sculptural intervention by Davide Rivalta.

The artwork Gorilla, a bronze casting about three metres high, located on the Feniglia beach, in an ‘only-on-foot’ area, has been imagined by the artist as a solitary presence intended to gradually reveal itself to visitors and bathers during the Summer, to stimulate a casual encounter between vegetation, humans and animals, evoking the suggestive and wild atmosphere typical of the nature reserve that connects the promontory of Ansedonia to Monte Argentario.

At the same time, a second artwork, Scimpanzé, will live on the rocks near the remains of the Etruscan Port at the Tagliata di Ansedonia, to ideally connect the two accesses from the sea to the promontory.

Both sculptures represent a continuum between Rivalta’s early works in the sculptural process and his current international recognition; they are in fact the first series of animals created by the artist, symbolising his debut.

The exhibition in Maremma marks the conclusion of an itinerant journey that has toured several prestigious Italian and foreign institutions, starting from the snow-capped mountains of Gstaad, Switzerland (2019), and continuing on to La Galleria Nazionale in Rome (2022), the Castello di Brescia (2023) and finally the Palazzo Reale in Turin (2023).

Davide Rivalta lives in Bologna, where he was born in 1974 and where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, in which he currently teaches. Winning the competition to have a work of art placed in the courtyard of the Palace of Justice in Ravenna in 1998 marked the beginning of his artistic evolution. His preferred working techniques are sculpture, drawing and painting. Some of his works are on permanent display in various Italian and foreign cities. He has exhibited in centres and museum institutions such as the National Gallery, the GAM in Bologna, the MAN in Nuoro, the MARCA in Catanzaro, the Galleria Civica in Modena, and the MAMbo in Bologna. In 2010, he participated in the first Aichi Triennale, Arts and Cities in Nagoya, Arte alle Corti in Turin, Monumenta in Mougin, and the Biennale Disegno Rimini in 2016, the XXII Milan Triennale.

Since 2017 he has been consistently inhabiting various areas of urban environments with his works: in 2017 in Antibes, in 2018 in Neuchâtel and Gstaad and in 2020 in Mougins. In 2019 he exhibited at the Friedhof am Hörnli in Riehen and at the Forte Belvedere in Florence before taking his monumental works to the Castello di Brescia and the Palazzo Reale in Turin in 2023.

With the patronage of Municipality of Orbetello

In collaboration with Marco and Roberto Niccoli