Staccioli Paolo

«Lightness, grace, irony. Here are three fixed stars to find your way around Paolo Staccioli's work... Use these three keys to understanding when looking at Paolo Staccioli's ceramics; you will find that there are no better ones to recognize the authentic quality, when you encounter it» (Antonio Paolucci)

Born in Scandicci (Florence) in 1943, Paolo Staccioli began his career as an artist in the 1970s, starting out as a painter and soon attracting attention at the local level. In the early 1990s, the need to experiment with a new artistic vocabulary prompted him to move to Faenza, to the workshop of a local ceramist and potter, where he learnt the techniques and skills associated with this particular art. It was here that Staccioli produced his first vases, initially adopting the glazed ceramic technique then gradually experimenting with “reduction” firing, which allowed him to achieve an extraordinary iridescence and sheen.

Having fully mastered the technique, Staccioli continued under his own steam to experiment on a daily basis with the use of fire and of copper oxides, producing a vast range of vases which he then decorated with imaginary figurative narratives fixed for eternity by an enamel sheen. These works earned him his first true recognition and success at personal and collective exhibitions as well as at important cultural events: his ceramics with their strong metallic effect and sparkling enamel finish soon won praise for their elegance and originality not only in Florentine art circles but throughout the country.

The characters that populated the surfaces of his ceramics in this phase (merry-go-rounds with toy horses suspended in mid-air accompanied by winged putti, trumpet players, dolls and Pulcinellas) soon acquired a third dimension, translating into sculptures yet without losing their fairy-tale aura, their extraneity to all notion of time or place: idealized shapes reminiscent of pre-Roman statuary (of Etruscan sculpture in particular), to which the polychromy of ceramic added a vigorous effect of contrasting masses. Warriors, travellers, cardinals and horses soon joined the already varied throng of imaginary figures and began, in the second half of the 1990s, to add their lively touch to major public and private collections both in Italy and abroad.

In the early part of the new millennium, in his eagerness to experiment with new materials and with different expressive registers thanks to the use of those materials, Staccioli began to translate his ideas into the more lasting medium of bronze (albeit without ever losing his love of working with earthenware), moving away from research into copper oxides and towards metallic patinas. It was in this more recent phase that his figures took on a previously unknown monumentality, which tends to set his horses and his warriors even more firmly in a dimension outside of time.

Paolo Staccioli has won an enormous amount of praise and recognition both from critics and from the general public, especially over the past ten years, and he has taken part in awards and exhibitions that have won him a place of absolute prestige in the field of contemporary art. 

 

His most recent exhibitions

2019

“Indistinti Confini. Da Firenze a Vinci”, Florence Art Gallery, Firenze.

“Paolo Staccioli. Guerrieri, cavalli e centauri”, Magazzini del Sale, Palazzo Pubblico, Piazza il Campo, Siena

2018

“Trasparenze, Maranghi / Staccioli”, Istituto di Cultura Italiana di Stoccarda, a cura di Kunstgalerie Bech, Stuttgart

2017

“Paola e Paolo Staccioli, Passaggi”, Auditorium del Comune Piazzale della Resistenza, Scandicci

“Paolo Staccioli. Viaggio onirico”, Museo Giuliano Ghelli, San Casciano in Val di Pesa (Firenze)

“Staccioli/Bavia/Caplin”, N20, 20, Cross Street, 2BG London 

“Paolo Staccioli. Un viaggio immobile. Incontri fermate attese”, Palermo

“Paolo Staccioli. Memorie. Ceramiche e bronzi”, Livorno

“Paolo Staccioli. Dialoghi”, Arianna Sartori Arte & Object Design, Mantova

2016

“Giovanni Maranghi e Paolo Staccioli. Incontro/ Begegnug”, Engel & Voelkers and Friends, Feurbach, Stuttgart 

“Luminosity. Ceramics by Paolo Staccioli”, Hammond Museum, North Salem, New York

“Seminare arte. Paolo Staccioli”, Boutique Hotel zum Rosenbaum, Nals, Süd Tirol

“Paolo Staccioli. Viaggiatori nel tempo” vie del centro storico di Capri

2015

“Il viaggiatore immobile. Paolo Staccioli”, Ciemmeci Spazio Arte, Empoli

2014 “Paolo Staccioli”, Galleria Pio Fedi, Firenze

“Paolo Staccioli. Sculture recenti: ceramiche – bronzi”, Galleria Arianna Sartori, Mantova

“Danilo Fusi, Paolo Staccioli, La luna, il sole e l’anima delle cose”, Museo di Arte Contemporanea Lu.C.C.A

Collettiva “Overlooking Garden”, Villa La Versiliana, Marina di Pietrasanta (LU)

Paolo Staccioli & Renzo Galardini “Toskanische Fingerabdrücke - Impronte toscane”,

Galerie Lacke & Farben, Berlin

Collettiva “Gioielli d’artista. La tradizione della modernità”, Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, Firenze

Paolo Staccioli "La Superficie dell'Equilibrio", Giardini di Villa Salviati, Firenze

Paolo Staccioli "Poetica inquietudine", Galleria Artespressione, Milano 

“Le ceramiche di Paolo e Paola Staccioli”, Officina Profumo - Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella, Firenze

“Paolo Staccioli. Le cortesie, le audaci imprese io canto”, Loggia della Limonaia, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Firenze 

2013

“Paolo Staccioli. Il Primato della storia”, Terme il Tettuccio di Montecatini (PT) 

Ex Mulino Antonibon, Nove (VI) esposizione personale in occasione della Festa della Ceramica

Installazione di un Guerriero in bronzo presso la rotonda della piscina comunale di Pontassieve (FI)

“Paolo Staccioli. Il Primato della storia”, Terme il Tettuccio di Montecatini (PT) 

Ex Mulino Antonibon, Nove (VI) esposizione personale in occasione della Festa della Ceramica

Installazione di un Guerriero in bronzo presso la rotonda della piscina comunale di Pontassieve (FI) 

2012

“Imagina. Arte in Fiera”, Reggio Emilia

“Contemporanea Arte Moderna e Contemporanea”, Fiera di Forlì 

“Il guerriero e la farfalla. Paolo e Paola Staccioli”, Ex convento Santa Chiara, Nobile Contrada del Nicchio, Siena 

Pietrasanta, Piazza del Duomo (lato campanile)

2011

“Opere/Sculptures”, Museo Horne, Firenze 

2009

Galleria Selective Art, Paris 

Istituto di Cultura Italiana, Washington 

Istituto di Cultura Italiana, New York 

2008

FuLe International Ceramic Art Museum, Fuping, Cina

2007

“I Segni della Terra”, Museo Archeologico di Fiesole 

2005-2006

“Le gioiose ceramiche di Paolo Staccioli”, Museo delle Porcellane, Palazzo Pitti, Firenze