Italian Ceramic Vase In Etruscan Style Dating From The Mid-20th Century, By Mariano Pieroni

Italian Mid-Century Ceramic Vase in Etruscan Style in by Mariano Pieroni 1950s

Conical ceramic vessel with a pronounced, straight rim.
The color is dark brown-red and the graphic decoration around the rim is worked in a rich sand tone.
The surface is rough and textured, but glazed, which gives the object a special appeal.
This decorative object has an Etruscan character and was crafted by M. Pieroniin 1955-56 in Faenza
at the Istituto d'arte Faenza.

Mariano Pieroni was born in Barga (Lucca) on June 17, 1937. He lives and works in Solbiate Arno (Varese).
An ideologist of the "Dimensionismo" movement, he was a member of historic groups in the Lombardy area: "LIBERI ARTISTI DEL VARESOTTO" (LADPDV),

i Besnatesi, Porta Ticinese, Centro documentazione Arte Varese, "Tectores Errantes," and "Dimensionismo." From 1952 to 1966, he lived in Florence and attended the studios of Rosai, Grazzini, and Conti, and the free school of nude art at the Academy of Fine Arts directed by Giorgio Settala. He became a student of Silvio Polloni and, in 1953-54, of Pietro Annigoni. His mentors also included Ugo Seravalle (his first teacher) and Emanuele Zambini (a renowned sculptor). He met the great Italian-American artist Agostino Nivola during the summer of 1950 and studied under him at Villa Pozzolini in Quercianella.

Early training in figurative art, he moved on to informal art, adopting various techniques such as collage and frottage, after studying nude painting at the Academy of Florence. During his years in Florence, he frequented, among others, Fiamma Vigo's "Numero" gallery and met the critic Boatto and Esther Panducci.

After the 1966 flood that inundated Florence, he was invited to Liège, Belgium, and modeled, as a sculptor, the entire "Andrea Junkers" collection.

After about a year, he returned to Italy and has lived in Solbiate Arno ever since. Since 1970, he has held over 90 solo exhibitions in Italy and abroad, including two in Geneva, three in Paris, two in Hamburg, and then in Brussels, Amsterdam, London, Rotterdam, New York, Boston, and Atlantic City. He has won awards and participated in prestigious group exhibitions. A vast and detailed bibliography of "Dimensionism" exists: in addition to monographic works, there are articles, reviews, and presentations published in all the most important Italian newspapers, various magazines, and foreign newspapers.

He has created public works, including frescoes and sculptures, stained glass windows, ceramics, works in welded iron, numerous bronzes, and polymaterial plastics.

His works are held in Italian and international museums. Since 1986, he has been the leader of a group called "Linea Confinaria" (plasticoni). Elio Sparano and Rolly Cannara dedicated two extensive television documentaries on Rai Uno (TG 1 Cronache 1978) to the work of sculptor, ceramist, and figurine maker Mariano Pieroni.

Since 2000, the rise of "plasticoni" art and the invention of the Ciclart workshops have given rise to a series of "plasticoni performance" events, a series of solo exhibitions and happenings featuring installations and outdoor performances in institutions and art galleries in Bobbio, Varese, Paris, Milan, Rome, Gallarate, Vercelli (Cigliano), Radicondoli (Siena), Montieri (Grosseto), and Castiglion Fiorentino (Arezzo). These events have been featured in newspapers, trade and non-trade magazines, websites, national and international television stations, including RAI, Mediaset, Swiss TV, BBC, Iranian TV, local television stations in the Varese area and other regions, as well as various broadcast networks in the Siena and Tuscan hinterland.

Group exhibitions with the "Liberi Artisti" group at the Chiostro di Voltorre, at the GAM in Gallarate, in Varese, Busto Arsizio, Tradate, Luino, etc.; solo exhibitions at the "Silvio Zannella" art gallery (Università del Melo), the "Oreste Quattrini" gallery in Varese, the church of S. Teresa in Varese, and at the Federici, Sante Zennaro, and Anna Frank institutes in Rho, Milan, Pisacane, and Poerio.

In Milan, with related solo exhibitions and workshops; at the "Quintocortile" art gallery (Animalia); Pisacane and Poerio workshops and the final exhibition "Under the Sky, an Eden"; in Rome, at the Sala del Bramante (Piazza del Popolo); at "Quintocortile" (Primaveresche, special participation). At the "Naturarte" international exhibition; in Lodi, at the Arsenale (Bertonico).

Of note since 2000, in addition to the solo exhibitions in Paris at the Galleria Manarte and the solo show titled "Natura Artifiziata" at the Civic Gallery of Modern Art in Gallarate, are the invitation and special participation in Naturarte, the invitation commissioned by the "Comitato Centro Storico" for the representation of a large "plasticoni" nativity scene with 14 life-size statues in Piazza Libertà, and seven sculptural nativity scenes in degassed Limoges (hand-made porcelain) simultaneously in the most famous shop windows in the center of Gallarate for a month and a half.

In 2006, another special invitation to Rome's Sale del Bramante, with 22 life-size statues, for a nativity scene with animals and fantastical figures. In Bobbio (Piacenza), the performance "Cima d'albero - plasticoni" and the solo exhibition Pisacane e Poerio in Milan.

In 2007, an "all-encompassing" exhibition (plastic sculpture, ceramic sculpture, painting, graphics, scenography, masks), at the Cavedio dell'Abbazia di S. Colombano in Piacenza, Bobbio, an extensive personal exhibition which was followed by invitations from various parts of the world and Italy such as in Radicondoli (Siena) in 2008, the tenth anniversary of the international sculpture exhibition.