Earth and fire
Italian ceramic art

with an essay by G. Cefariello Grosso

exhibition catalogue: Bruxelles, Palais de Charles Quint
Archaeological site of the Coudenberg, Place Royale, 2-8 Dec. 2003

“In Italy ceramics indubitably represent history, tradition and cultures that have become rooted over the centuries, but also profound sensitivity, the ongoing ability for research, a strong propensity for formal innovation; in short, a happy art form that can manifest itself in the most varied forms of expression.” The book is the catalogue of works exhibited in the section entitled ‘Artistic Ceramics and Innovation’, part of an event staged in the heart of the European Union by the National Confederation of Crafts and SMEs, Confederation of Craft Trades and Artex – Centre for Artistic and Traditional Craftsmanship of Tuscany in collaboration with the Italian Association of Ceramic Cities, as part of the ACTA Project coordinated by the Agenzia Polo Ceramico and financed by the Ministry of Production Activities. The masters of a great tradition are flanked by the members of a new generation that has shown extraordinary technical qualities and refined sensitivity. In her essay ‘Modern Italian Ceramics’, Gilda Cefariello Grosso writes, “The works exhibited here illustrate yet again the difficult path that a ceramicist must travel, between sentiment, a taste for beauty, and the relationship between the meaning of the archaic and graphic pleasure: in other words, of the ongoing need to confront the intrinsic, primordial expressiveness of worked clay and the ability to shape it into the expressive medium of a way of creating art.”