Paolo StaccioliImage Gallery

When I started working with ceramics I tended to choose forms that allowed me to have a wide surface on which I could easily draw. Now I alternate this type of pieces (vases, tiles of different sizes) with sculptures (these are actuallly the pieces I prefer at the moment).

At a recent solo exhibition in Montelupo Fiorentino (Florence) I exhibited about 100 figures of cardinals.

I am not good at talking about my work. My friend and critic Marco Moretti recently wrote this text:
"Initially, he was a painter: a painter of tenuous heavenly fantasies, of enchantments hovering amid an expanse of airiness, in contrast with his solid, weighty, boulder-like physique. But his spirit was all taken up by that contagious, elusive lightness, which was subsequently to find its expression in the alchemies of ceramics, aided by the spiralling wreaths of fire.

His main subject was the horse, a captivating, yet insidious figure, from the movements of whose body, however, Staccioli succeeded in drawing unprecedented forms of harmony. Horses painted on vases, and on supports of every kind, horses fashioned from different types of clay, with or without riders, on which the irrevocable effects of fire produced unexpected iridescences, as a result of the toning of oxides and salts.

Subsequently, Staccioli constructed human figures. Standing, motionless figures, uncommon up to that moment for the poet of horses in motion: weighty limbs like his own, of scantily-armed farmer-soldiers, with a lightweight helmet and a shield, a jerkin with a design made up of horses, and nothing underneath. Then he created little ships, crowded with sundry members of the human race, and then spotless white ranks of tiny warriors armed with spears, the final bearers of a placid, voiceless anti-heroism, which was already present in his allusions limited to the realm of dreams."

Work generally available from:
Kens Art Gallery, Florence, Italy
Galleria Gagliardi, San Gimignano, Italy
Galleria Materia Crea, Greve in Chianti, Italy
Galleria L'Incontro, Chiari, Brescia, Italy
Galleria Paoli, Prato, Italy
Where I Fell In Love, Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire, UK.

I have a gas kiln. Some of my works are fired twice (bisque firing to about 980 degrees Centigrade, second firing to about 940 degrees Centigrade), others (especially sculptures) are fired once (950 degrees).

I use different types of clay, usually fire clay for sculptures. I often cover the clay with an opaque white slip. The drawing is made with an underglaze pencil and colours are painted with metallic oxides, sulphates and nitrates. A transparent glaze is sprayed over and during the firing I alternate reduction and oxidation phases.

Paolo Staccioli was born in Scandicci, Florence, in 1943.

He started painting when he was very young and his first exhibition took place in 1973.

In the late eighties he began painting on ceramics and attended a studio in Faenza where he became familiar with firings in reducing atmospheres. Since then he has incorporated ceramics with painting and in the last few years he has often represented his favourite subjects (putti, horses, warriors ) as sculptures .He participated to several editions of the Faenza International Ceramics Festival.

In 1999 he was invited to the Aberystwyth International Festival and took part to Ceramic Millenium (Amsterdam).

He has had more than fifty personal exhibitions both in Italy and Europe.