Painter, printmaker, and sculptor Federico Righi was born in Trieste, Italy in 1908. Righi was primarily self-taught in drawing and painting, inspired by the aesthetic of the Futurist movement of the early 1900s as well as Cubism and Surrealism. He joined the Italian Futurist movement in 1932 but after Nationalistic sentiment condemned many artists for their "degenerate" art, Righi, whose works often explored the surreal and erotic, distanced himself from any official affiliation.

He began a exhibiting in 1941, participating in the Venice Biennale and holding his first solo show in 1947 at the Galleria Sandri in Venice. Several exhibitions in Italy gained him recognition as a painter and graphic artist and he was invited to show at Galerie Auriga in Bern, Switzerland in 1957 and in Chicago the following year.

In addition to painting and printmaking, Righi was a muralist and theater set designer, commissioned to design the décor for the interior walls of an Italian luxury liner fleet and working for Teatro Stabile in his hometown of Trieste.

By the 1960s Righi was an internationally recognized artist, and shows took him throughout the U.S. and Europe for most of his life, with two major exhibitions of his fine prints at the Centro Friulano di Arti Plastiche in 1981 and 1985, the year before his death in Ruda, Italy.