Carlo Zauli
Sculptor and ceramist, Carlo Zauli (1926-2002) was one of the most outstanding artists of the second half of the 20th century in Italy. From the 1950s until the end of the century, he helped revive Italian ceramics, bring it into the limelight internationally and free it from its purely useful or decorative functions. Several times winner of the famous Faenza Prize (1953, 1958 and 1962). It has often been exhibited in Italy and abroad (Europe, Japan, Russia, United States). He creates prestigious monumental works for public buildings and private residences.
Trained by Domenico Rambelli and Anselmo Bucci at the "Gaetano Ballardini" Art Institute in Faenza (where he then taught from 1958 to 1978), Zauli refined his artistic vocation by associating with post-war painters and sculptors such as Gio and Arnaldo Pomodoro, Lucio Fontana, Floriano Bodini, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Afro and many others, as well as the ceramicists Albert Diato and Nanni Valentini.
In 1950, in partnership with Unberto Zannoni in particular, he built his first oven in the Nuova Ca'Pirota, in Faenza. This villa will become his own studio and now houses the Carlo Zauli museum. He began original research which immediately revealed his creative talent, in the form of panels and especially vases with asymmetrical shapes, sparkling colors, very particular enamels. He creates an imagery in which rock figuration, geometric abstraction and other informal suggestions are reconciled. These ceramic creations earned the artist prestigious official awards and numerous commissions from abroad.
They gradually gave way to intense technical experimentation in the second half of the decade, leading to the almost exclusive use of sandstone. It is a research of new pigments, until the development of the prestigious "Bianco Zauli", a glaze with velvety shine. The raw colors and twisted shapes of the first period followed a rigorous research aimed at the essential. These are creations characterized by a rare elegance, of Scandinavian influence, which already herald future plastic developments.
His sculptural vocation born in the mid-1960s. Monumental or in more modest formats, his works are always imbued with great vigor. Free forms and abstract expressionism come together in these particular creations.
