Graziano Riccio, born in Cosenza in 1979 and known in the art world by the name “Graz,” is a contemporary Italian artist who has found in art the most authentic language for expressing his vision of the world.

After moving to Rome, a city that profoundly shaped his artistic sensibility, he began his creative journey in 2016, developing a personal style that blends emotion, color, and experimentation.

Today he lives and works in the charming coastal town of Civitavecchia, where the sun and the sea fuel the expressive power of his palette. This Mediterranean landscape has become an integral part of his inspiration, enriching his visual language with energy and light.

His artistic journey began with acrylic painting on canvas, but it was his encounter with the stratigraphic palette knife technique, and with the internationally renowned Master of Art Mario Salvo, that marked a fundamental turning point. This innovative technique, based on applying successive layers of color with a palette knife, allowed Graz to develop a unique and immediately recognizable language.

In May 2022, he signed the Manifesto of the Stratigraphic Artists (Manifesto degli Stratigrafici), joining the artistic movement that brings together artists united by their use of this distinctive painting technique. This step consolidated his presence on the contemporary art scene and helped define his creative identity.

Graz’s work is distinguished by several defining traits:

• Distortion of reality: his works subvert conventional perception, offering alternative and surprising visions of the real.
• Chromatic emphasis: bold, vibrant color becomes the central element of the composition, creating powerful visual impact.
• Intense use of color: his energetic palette recalls the revolutionary spirit of early twentieth-century French Fauvism.
• Creative freedom: the artist moves between inner images and visionary reworkings of observed reality, allowing figures and places to emerge from his subconscious.
• Dystopian projection: many works offer altered, at times unsettling, readings of the present, raising questions about possible futures or parallel realities.

Graz describes his approach as an attempt to “strike the viewer’s eye, captivate it, and draw it into the painting.” Indeed, his works are not meant merely to be looked at: they engage, pull in, and transform the perception of those who view them.

Over time, without abandoning canvas, the artist moved toward wooden panels as his preferred support, a choice that further enriches his exploration of material and structure, allowing him to discover new visual depths through the stratigraphic technique.

Despite a still relatively recent career, Graz has quickly established himself as an original and provocative voice in contemporary Italian art. His work is constantly evolving, in ongoing dialogue between form and emotion, intuition and technique. The adoption of the name “Graz” thus becomes the hallmark of a strong, coherent, and recognizable artistic identity, one capable of leaving its mark on the world of visual art.