Raffaele Bova was born in Frignano, province of Caserta, in 1946. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples where he became a pupil of Domenico Spinosa. In 1970 Raffaele Bova participated at “Young Painters” exhibition, set up at the Centro Sud Arte of Scafati, where he began its exhibition activity. In 1972 he was invited to “Perché l’ironia?” held in the Exhibition Hall of the Chamber of Commerce of Caserta, with critical interventions by Crispolti, De Micheli, Marchiori, Vivaldi and Ruju. In the same year Bovaheld two solo exhibitions, one at the CZ Art Centre in Aversa, the other, entitled Vita Morte (Miracles) of Surrealism: Raffaele Bova- Salvador Dalì, ah rhe Junk Culture Studio in Caserta.

In 1974 he set up U.N at Il Guizzo in Caserta and, in the same city, the action\performance Operazione CE (S2)0, anticipation of his commitment to social and environmental issues. Towards this direction, in the mid-seventies, with Peppe Ferraro, Livio Marino, Aldo Ribattezzato and Anonello Tagliafierro, Bova founded the Collettivo Lineacontinua Terra di lavoro, operating intensively between 1976 and 1979 in the territory of Caserta, in connection with other groups and individual aesthetic operators of Campania, whose aggregation on the issues of cultural work in one of the most interesting events of the artistic culture, not only of the southern area.
Bova maintains, within the group, its own specificity characterized by desecratory and provocatively ironic vein towards the form of power, for example, by the cycle of works and actions dedicated to the Lira.

The 80’s, on the other hand, began with the invitation to participate in the special section, “Il tempo del museo Venezia” curated by Ugo La Pietra, of Venice Biennale of 1980, in which he exhibits “Ricordi di una porta” (Duchamp has nothing to do with it) dalla toilette uomini della Biennale di Venezia, recontextualizing the toilette of the Italian Pavillion, within the exhibition path.
The following years mark, as for many other fellow travelers, a gradual return to painting arriving at a semantics full of lyricism, graphisism and alphanumeric symbols, poised between realism ad abstract declination. In this period the artist participates in exhibitions such as “immaginario Riflesso”, curated by Massimo Bignardi, within the activities of the Chair of History Contemporary Art of the Ateneo of Salerno ad set up in 1982, first in Teggiano, in autumn at the Museo Provinciale di Salerno, in 1983 at the Arsenals of Amalfi and Belvedere of San leucio in Caserta; “Campania Felix 83”, an exhibition curated by Enzo Battarra and set up at Castel dell’Ovo in Naples; the “X Expo Arte2 in Bari and at the “Observatory Vesuviano”. Ripe “86” curated by Massimo Bignardi and Enrico Crispolti, set up in the historic center of Ripe San Ginesio, in the Marche. There are also many personal ones who remember: il fuoco brucia e il fumo sale, with Enzo Navarra, in 1982 at the Galleria San Carlo in Naples and Ricordi di una porta (Duchamp non c’entra), Galleria Mercato del Sale, Milan, both from 1983.

The project RETROGUARD A, dates to 1990, held at Studio II Castello, in Maddaloni (CE), then in Piazza del Popolo in Rome and the entrance to the Artefiera in Bologna: interventions in which the artist confirms his polemical and desecrating vein, this time towards the same system of art. A trend that will go through a good part of his subsequent production both in the pictorial and the installation-behavioral field, in what will be his activities against the consumer society, the Camorra and pollution of the lands of fire. In this regard we remember Dalla matrice al codice il quadro è fatto.it, set up at the Facoltà di Architettura L. Vanvitelli di Aversa, in 2010; Terra dei Fuochi e Sole (fuoco fumm cenere e pizza) at the MAC3-Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Caserta, in 2014; Danza dei sacchi, Nasceranno nuovi fiori, happening realizzato a Casapesenna (CE) nel 2016 e il progetto per la scultura, mai realizzato, Uomo Perfetto, monument to the pollution idiocy of modern man.

He taught at the Liceo Artistico di Aversa. He lives and works San Marcellino (CE).

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