James Rizzi (1950-2011)

James Rizzi was born in Brooklyn, New York October 1950. He studied at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and graduated in 1974. In his senior year of college, he began to experiment by combining painting, sculpture and printmaking. It was then that he first began working with his 3-D construction process. He's an "urban primitive" artist. The subject matter of Rizzi's work is the celebration of his happy childhood in New York. In 1974, shortly after graduation, Rizzi met an elderly gentleman at the Greenwich Village Art Fair. The man expressed great admiration for his work. The man, unknown to him at the time, turned out to be internationally known sculptor Chaim Gross, father-in-law of Red Grooms, an acknowledged master of the art-world. James Rizzi's most notable influences are the French Dadaist painter Jean Dubuffet, Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee. Having been honored with solo shows in the United States, Europe and Asia, his work has received much recognition throughout the globe, for which he is extremely grateful.