Carlo Zauli is a son of the exceptionally creative atmosphere of Faenza before and especially after World War II and has shaped its reputation since.

 

Born in 1926, Zauli began his training at the age of eleven only to be interrupted by war and deportation, but quickly resumed after his return in 1946. Master ceramicists and sculptors Domenico Rambelli and Anselmo Bucci, as well as courses in decoration, significantly impacted on his artistic work in the early 1950s, synonymous with the Nuova Cà Pirota workshop, which he founded with fellow students. There, Zauli broke away from tradition, explored new forms, contemporary aesthetic concepts and invented new formal languages of symbiosis between form and decoration.

 

Asymmetrical and irregularly shaped majolica vases were followed by experiments with high-temperature materials and enamels. In the second half of the 1950s, Zauli made his transition from majolica and informal gestures to grès and the exploration of elementary geometric shapes, to purely plastic form, sculpture.

 

Zauli has won many national and international ceramic competitions, including the Premio Faenza (1953, 1958, 1962), the Premio Gubbio « Maestro Giorgio » (1957, 1960, 1962, 1964), and enjoyed many exhibitions in private and public galleries in Italy and abroad. Solo exhibitions include Ateneo de Madrid, Madrid, (1960), Hetjens Museum, Düsseldorf (1972), Museum of Modern Art Umeda, Osaka (1977), Kaupungin Taidemuseo, Helsinki, (1987), House of Artists, Moscow (1989), Museo Internazionale della Ceramica Faen za, (2002), Garth Clark Gallery, New York (2004), Terra Incognita: Italy’s Ceramic Revival, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London, 2009.