Having left his home in the Black Forest of Germany at the age of 16, Claudio Ravenstein discovered murals and pavement art, which in turn fuelled his travels through Europe and India. The late 1970’s saw Claudio paint several works onto the Piazza de la Signoria in Florence, including Raphael’s The Transfiguration, Galatea and the Sistine Madonna as well as Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo and The Creation of Adam.
Having moved temporarily to the UK in 1982 and facing the realisation that pavement painting was decidedly less fruitful there than in Italy, he developed a technique to preserve pastels on wooden boards and rekindled a romance with oils. This period also saw him move into the medium of the tattoo. Perhaps it was his immersion in the rock n roll scene where he had drummed for a rogues gallery of bands or simply a new wave of tattoo culture that swept him away, but before long, he had rented a fishmongers in a busy Bristol street, fumigated it and converted it into a studio. He could lay claim to a four month waiting list for those with a naked patch of skin and a vision.
He had long nurtured a secret passion for animation and finally drew himself out of the closet when he was invited to study at the University of Wales in Carleon, Newport where he got his animation degree in the year 2000. While studying there, he joined the Bristol based company Bolexbrothers where he became the 2D chief animator from 2000-2002. Bolexbrothers were the leading animation company in the UK at the time and won a slew of awards as well as being commissioned for the likes of Nike, Fanta, Nestle Ice-Tea, Lego, Kellogg, and Budweiser.
In 2003 he moved to Berlin to found the Ravenstein Studio which worked on an intriguing array of graphic, animated and artistic projects. And yet the urge for discovering new things and places as well as the incessant grey skies in Germany drove Claudio in Germany to leave Berlin behind. Sailing his boat through the Baltic Sea and down to the Mediterranean, he instantly fell in love with the city of Marseille, which he made his home.
Claudio continues to work with both dynamic and still graphics and is currently wrist deep in a new animated film about the cycles of life and the rhythms of nature called ‘The Birds and the Bees’. Aimed primarily at children but subliminally at adults, the film unifies the micro and the macrocosmic into a fluid dance through an animated wonderland.