Michele Maria. Color lithograph with screenprint and relief on Rives BFK. 1020x675 mm; 40x26 1/2 inches (sheet), full margins. Signed in ink and dated and numbered 25/28 in pencil, lower margin. 1989. A very good impression.
In one of the obituaries written for Ricard, the artist is described as "a Renaissance man for the cocaine age." A defining figure of the Andy Warhol's Factory, his oeuvre was a psychedelic interdisciplinary experiment in the elevation of text to art. He moved to New York City at the age of 18 after seeing a Warhol painting, and quickly became a background yet instrumental figure in the Pop Art Movement. With his connections, he worked with artists and arbiters of taste such as Allen Ginsberg and Jean Michel Basquiat, whose career he helped to launch with a seminal essay published in ArtForum entitled The Radiant Child, 1981. Among the other artists who were elevated by Ricard's attentions were Brice Marden, Francesco Clemente, Keith Haring and Julian Schnabel.
