In 1970 he records “PRIMO,SECONDO,FRUTTA ( IVAN compreso )”; it’s the first time we can hear citations in texts ( la donzelletta vien dalla campagna, Maria Batman, Agitare prima dell’uso ecc. ), a great irony, the first Italian crazy ( but maybe without Ivan’s will..! ), kaleidoscopic tenses, meanings like Chinese boxes or matrioskas...This personality is scandalous and indecipherable for an Italy used to...It doesn’t matter...!
Music is extremely innovative, also thanks to his meeting with Roberto Colombo, who make his debut in the art of arrangements.

But the most innovative thing in this second album is the advance of about 20 years on multimediality, so much abused today.

Ivan in fact, invents the T.U.V.O.G art, the total art of the 5 senses, that means touch, hearing, sight, smell and taste. It’s a real DADA provocation, so much dear to Cattaneo.

T.U.V.O.G is a book combined with its LP ( Primo, secondo, frutta Ivan compreso ); a book full of images, poems and songs, artistic posters and suggestions for smells, perfumes, tastes, sensations, which are to be combined with every specific song.

All the art is combined, in addition to the album and the book, with a great exhibition in Milan, and with an innovative and irreverent theatrical show.
During the exhibition, every picture gives SIGHT to a precise song.
Ivan devotes more and more himself to happenings and performances: much theatre, much art and little songs.

After all we already know it...Cattaneo has always felt close in the role of simple singer or singer-writer.
He has always preferred to define himself as a MANIPULATOR OF CREATIVE ENERGIES, which wander from singing to mime, painting, theatre, or to the invention and the launch of new personalities. The success of some of the first Italian punk groups is due to him. And also the success of Anna Oxa: who doesn’t remember her in San Remo, in a Callas-punk version, with a pipe and a suit-case?
And then many others who had contacts with him ( Patrizia di Malta, Gruppo Italiano, Diana Est, Down Mitchell of 49N group and also the revival of a new and beautiful Patti Pravo).

In 1977 he has his first debut on TV with Roberto Benigni in the transmission TELEVACCA, then censured in ONDA LIBERA.

In 1979 he records the album SUPERIVAN, with P.F.M. and the arrangements of Roberto Colombo.

It’s an album in which the experimental vanguard of Cattaneo is linked with a more communicative kind of song; texts are still ironical and biting, but his voice is more traditional than before, and vocalisms are used just in the most important points. See for example MALE BELLO, also recorded by Patti Pravo.

Rock concerts starts in this period, Ivan is acclaimed as the new star of Italian rock; on his stages there are technologies and settings, an enormous wall composed by 50 television sets which exhale a blue light called “cathode snow”. Atmospheres are glacial and unreal, like his first band NEHOMO, which reminds the American DEVO.
Ivan is a real performer; as well as his voice, he uses mime, dance, irony, grimace and drama through the movements of his face and his body.

In 1980 he changes his record company; the “alternative people” period is concluded.
Ivan records for CDG the album “URLO ( di una spia in agguato avant la guerre troisième )”. POLISEX is the main song and become a kind of hymn in Milan ’80, it’s transmitted by every radio and it’s very appreciated also by the critics.

In 1981 Ivan has a great idea: to recover old dead songs of the mythical ’60...a real work of modern archaeology.
All the project is supported by a transmission which is considered one of the most innovative of that period: MISTER FANTASY.

And so it rises the album “2060 ITALIAN GRAFFIATI”. It’s a clamorous success ( 475.000 sold copies ) which Ivan himself defines “Unexpected”, like the most beautiful or the most awful things.

In 1982 Ivan returns back to his role of singer-writer and multimedial manipulator with the album “IVAN IL TERRIBILE”, but the effect is naturally less popular than that of the previous revival album.

In 1983 Ivan, with Caterina Caselli and Red Ronnie, founds in Rimini the famous discoteque Bandiera Gialla.

And Bandiera Gialla is also the title of his new revival album, arranged by the master of electronic: Roberto Cacciapaglia.

“Bang Bang”, “Ho in mente te”, “La bambolina che fa non no”, “Ho difeso il mio amore” and many other songs confer him a success which seems to overcome that of Italian Graffiati.

It starts a period of recalling and balance; Ivan doesn’t deny this kind of success, but he feels too exploited and reduced to a role of simple interpreter, that is too close for him. Ivan feels to have left too much behind his starting artistic ideas.

The relationship with his record company becomes more and more stretched.

Only two albums, “QUANDO TRAMONTA IL SOL..” e “DANCING NUMBER” belong to these years.
Then he publishes a last revival album, “VIETATO AI MINORI”, that will guarantee him the redeeming and the resolution from the record agreement.

VIETATO AI MINORI is maybe a useless album from the point of view of the idea and the innovation, but it’s new in the arrangements of the discovered Roberto Colombo.

Ivan definitively stops with disks and record companies; he feels extremely hurt and disappointed by the superficial world of television, and generally by the show biz.

The following years are dedicated to the study of electronic music, to the painting, and, above all, to the interior research.

In 1989 Ivan completes a colossal pictorial operation: 100 GIOCONDE HAIKU, 100 paintings with male/female faces, combined with titles which form a real Haiku poem.

A great exhibition of his paintings makes a tour of Italy, it’s organized in many cities of our peninsula, in Avignone in France and in many discos where Ivan shows paintings, installations, slides and musical performances.

In 1992 Ivan records “IL CUORE E’ NUDO E I PESCI CANTANO”, an album which anticipate all the themes typical of New Age. It’s an album dedicated to the relationship between Ivan and the Indian master Osho.
Also his music is in advance of many years, thanks to its Drum & Bass acoustics.

Since 1994 Ivan has been working to a new project which will probably come out in 2000 and will evolve in a work in progress that will last for 10 years.

The global project is called “ZOOcietà DUE.OOO” and will comprehend different books of mixed images and slogan-poems, a theatrical play, some exhibitions and installations in art galleries and...Why not? Also some CD to describe sound manipulations. It all must remain mysterious... “It’s a surprise-factor!” says Ivan, but he doesn’t add anything...tomorrow is another day...and so...SURPRISE!
 

During the second half of the 90’ years he alternates his live activity of musician and singer with that of painter and multimedial artist.
In the spring of 1999 Ivan is contacted by Lexy Production, for the presence in a vanguard-movie as leading actor.
The movie, an italic-polish co-production , is a cult-movie dedicated to the singers who have lived an important season during the 80’ years. The title is “KK-Kairos and Kronos-The time of emotions”.
Dario Maria Gulli, ex cartoon writer and current author of TV programs, is the writer and the director of the movie.
Presented to the Brescia Music Art in 2000, this movie, a cartoon similar to a strange comedy, is very appreciated in USA and in the countries of the Est. Cattaneo is the interpreter of an unreliable and avid producer of cartoons for children, while a great contribution to the music is given by YO-YO mundi, Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti and Johnson Righeira. The last one is one of the protagonists of the movie with Dario Maria Gulli and Alessandra di Sanzo.
In the month of June 1999 he participates with success to the beautiful exhibition “Musica senza suono”, dedicated to the musicians-painters, in the Revoltella museum of Trieste.
The national preview of the project “Zoocietà Due.000” is in February 2001 at the Verdi Theatre of Milan, for the third edition of the Theatrical show “Chansonnier!dalla canzone al teatro” cured by Giangilberto Monti.
In December he is the protagonist of the show “Musiche dai cieli-Voci e musiche delle religioni del mondo”, a series of concerts promoted by the Province and the diocese of Milan, made in the Churches of this city.
Ivan’s show is called “Kyrie Elei Songs-Racconti elettronici per una Medicazione dell’anima”, a recital-laboratory with the presentation of 15 story songs with moving videos on a maxi-screen.
From the enormous 100 Gioconde Haiku to digital paint, for Ivan the passage is unavoidable. The new exhibition inaugurated in the Artists Gallery of Brescia in 2002, is called ”SE DICO....SEDUCO?” and it’s a multimedial performance where images elaborated with computer and moved on canvas melt themselves with addicted artistic material. Also these canvas are followed by electronic tales singed by Ivan and illustrated by its video-art.
This mixture joins together the most classical past with the most digital future.
After cinema, theatre, music and cabaret in 2002 he has the change to participate in a musical, an artistic event which in Italy is having a great success. Title is “Joseph e la strabiliante tunica dei sogni in technicolor”,
The Italian representation of the English version created by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, authors of other musicals like “Jesus Christ super star” and “Evita”. The director is Claudio Insegno and Ivan has an important cameo-role interpreting a Pharaoh who suddenly turns into Elvis Presley on a well-created music.
This musical is a real success in many Italian theatres.
In this period he entertains the public with a very nice survey during the afternoon on Radio Kiss Kiss Network, ”Il gossippista del secolo” with irony and humour he tells about the manias of the vips during the 80’ years.
In the spring 2003, for the re-launch of his great friend Juni Russo, he create for her the videos of her 2 most important songs: “Morirò d’amore” e “Una rosa è una rosa”.

In 2004 Cattaneo receives the propose of Rai to participate in a TV reality where ten singers accept to live together
In a beauty farm without contact with the external world, preparing themselves in music and look for a return to the world of music.
The reality show is called Music Farm, and, although Ivan participates at the half of the program, he immediately conquers the public and his companions shifting the starting idea of the authors to pacific cohabitation made of sincere dialogues and nice goliardic events.
The share of the program is high and Ivan finds again love and esteem from public and singers.
The tour during the summer is a great success and Ivan announces his next album in 2005, accompanied by a DVD with all his multimedial production since his beginning; that’s a sort of video-book in which all his artistic languages can live together, music, songs, poetry, recitation, images.

Un particolare ringraziamento per la traduzione in lingua inglese a Dania Bernasconi

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