Riccardo Vecchio was born and raised in Milan. In 1994, after his studies in Italy and Germany, a Fulbright scholarship brought him to New York to The School of Visual Arts MFA program. Since 2003, Mr. Vecchio has been a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts.
Mr. Vecchio's work has been published in a wide variety of magazines and other print media in the United States and abroad, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Penguin Putnam, La Feltrinelli Editore (Italy), Rolling Stone, Harper's, NationalGeographic, The Smithsonian, The Washington Post, Wired, Harvard, and Columbia University among others. Mr. Vecchio's multifaceted work has also been published by the Criterion collection and various theatrical and media outlets, like The VerveMusic Group and American Movie Central, including several Broadway and off-Broadway productions.
In this last period, Vecchio has focused primarily on his projects and exhibits. Mr. Vecchio has participated in guest lectures in Museums, and his painted works have been shown in several groups and solo exhibitions. He is a recent recipient of the NYC Artist Corps Grant, for which he has created a project and a series of works centered on bringing attention to issues of climate and environmental injustice under the title "31 Degrees". The Project has already the support of the Visual Art Programming at the Brooklyn Public Library, which has organized a virtual artist talk on November 15th, 2021.
2022 “31 Degrees” 42 feet installation at the Dweck Gallery at the Brooklyn Public Library
2022 Affordable Art Fair. Sapience Chair. The images depicted on the sapience chair and the accompanying silk screens displayed here, are an extension of Riccardo Vecchio’s broader public arts project, 31 Degrees.
2021 “31 Degrees” Project Launch: presentation by artist Riccardo Vecchio. A public, multi-site mapping and mural project which draws attention to ecological inequalities in NYC neighborhoods. 31 Degrees gives visibility to environmental injustice through disparities in tree coverage and sets out to work with City agencies, organizations, and communities to plant trees in neighborhoods that need them most. Vecchio was joined by Navé Strauss, Director of Street Tree Planting at the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation, and BPL Environmental Justice Coordinator Acacia Thompson, who also is a community greening activist leading Greenpoint Tree Corps.
2021 “Werkzeichnungen” Dobrinka Salzman Gallery, New York, NY
2021 BMCC/ CUNY 31 Degrees: Climate and Social Justice, Riccardo Vecchio, Artist
2021 City Artist Corps Grant
2020 “Großstadt” Riverside Museum, Master Gallery. New York, NY
2018 Guest contemporary artist (lecture) at the Brooklyn Museum for "One Basquiat" Master Call. Brooklyn, NY.
2017 "Frammenti" Riccardo Vecchio, Lucio Isolani, Kikki Ghezzi. Italian Embassy, Washington DC.
2017 20 Portraits “The Walking Dead” Japanese Theater, Los Angeles, California
2017 “Making Connections” Plaxall Gallery, Queens, New York
2017 “War x Aritifice” (Solo). Gramercy Gallery, SVA New York
2017 "Il Cinema di Ugo Tognazzi" Group Show. Museo del Manifesto Cinematografico, Milan, Italy.
2016 “Inerita” Riccardo Vecchio, Jongil Ma, and Teresa Lundgren. Flatiron Project Space, New York.
2016 “From Here You Shall Not Pass” (Solo). Duke House, NYU Institute of Fine Arts, New York.
2016 The Great Hall Display Case Exhibition Series: Artists Talk with the Curator. NYU Institute of Fine Arts, NY
2016 “Three Graces” Riccardo Vecchio, Nona Faustine, Anastasia Warren, David Shrobe. Space 776, Brooklyn, NY
2016 "Fior Di Zucche” Group show. Spazio Tapirulan, Cremona, Italy.
2015 “RAW” Riccardo Vecchio, W. Hempel, K. Ryan, P. Secunda, C. Smith. Space 776, Brooklyn, NY.
2013 “Never Judge A Book By It’s Cover” Group show. Effearte Gallery, Milan, Italy.
2013 "Responding to New York through Drawing, Printmaking, and Writing” The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York. Workshop and Guest Lecture at the MET held in conjunction with the exhibition "George Bellows".
2012 “Where (We) Live” Performance with the SO Percussion Ensemble. Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Brooklyn, NY
2010 “Recent Paintings II” (Solo). Astor Row Unlimited, Brooklyn
2009 “Recent Paintings I” (Solo) Astor Row Unlimited, Brooklyn
2006 “Evocation Of Memory” Visual Arts Gallery, New York