Born in Mezzano di Primiero in the province of Trento on August 31, 1925, Riccardo Schweizer enrolled in 1945 at the State Institute of Art in Venice. He left the lagoon city in 1950 (only to return in 1954 as assistant to Bruno Saetti at the Academy of Fine Arts). He went to France, to Vallauris, a place that allowed him to seek and find answers to his need for aesthetic renewal. Here he comes into contact with Picasso and with the now legendary world of French avant-garde artists: Chagall, Cocteau, Tamayo, Pignon, Eluard: a hotbed of strongly vital thought that will radically influence the young Schweizer, allowing him to elaborate a stylistic figure capable of combining avant-garde and tradition, His friendship with the Catalan genius does not prevent him from working in absolute intellectual freedom: when experimenting with other materials and forms of expression, Schweizer manages to merge his very personal way of "making art" with the profound needs for interaction dictated by "real life." He confronts glass, ceramics, and design, creates frescoes, important sculptures for public spaces, and receives commissions for major architectural projects. Among the most qualifying examples, we will recall here the association with architect Francois Druet, which gave light to examples of balanced integration of art and architecture in various locations on the French Riviera: the large concrete bas-relief for the Town Hall of Carros, in the district of Nice, the Town Hall of Cap d'Ail, with interventions ranging from furnishings to wall paintings, and above all the Cinema Palace in Cannes, where Schweizer made interventions at several levels on the architectural structure. He passed away at the age of 79 in September 2004.