10 Corso Como presents “Unique Pieces” an exhibition by Rosanna Bianchi Piccoli, from Thursday 24th October 2019 to Monday 6th January 2020. Rosanna Bianchi Piccoli is an artist known for her research into ceramics from its origins to the present day.
On display, a selection of faience: Cosmopiatti and Vasi Sacri, rigorously unique works, the result of fifty years of study on the art of ceramics from the blue, green, and yellow colours of the tradition of majolica from the Renaissance period, to Mondrian’s primary colours.
The Cosmopiatti series was born out of the observation of the solar system, the universes discovered during the Sixties, those first space launches and cosmic explorations. Rosanna Bianchi Piccoli began to work on it in 1967, creating the first pieces on display in the iconic Galleria Il Sestante in via Spiga, Milan. There are 31 white faience Cosmopiatti with concentric rings and coloured orbits.
From 2011 to 2014 Rosanna resumes the cosmogonic series with 60 new plates, made in the Gatti di Faenza workshop and dedicated to constellations, astronomy genes and astrophysicists.
From Andromeda (2012) to Almagesto (2014), from Ipparco (2012) to Tycho Brahe (2012), from Altair (2011) to Margherita Hack (2011), each expression of a “Vento Celeste” that moves the human being and the stars. “Be the sails adapted to the Celestial Wind, there will be people who will not be afraid even in the face of that immensity,” said the father of modern astronomy Keplero.
The Sacred Vase collection belongs to the ceramics of fire, instead, destined for the rituals of the conservation, the preservation of our memory. “Time-filled pots” in traditional majolica are works produced on the potter’s wheel between 2014 and 2015. “It’s majolica because it is glazed. I insist a lot on this technique. It’s very old. It requires a great mastery of the material. No mistakes are allowed. Only a firm hand and a confident heart.” The artist explains.
In 1959 Emilio Tadini the Italian artist and writer, wrote about Rosanna Bianchi Piccoli’s work: “To make ceramics is not an abstract operation. It means choosing certain materials and not others, certain colours and not others. All elements, matter, form, colour, are lightened, reduced to the bone of their true consistency: and then reintegrated into their most particular vitality, spirit”.
The seal of Rosanna Bianchi Piccoli, the punch with the cogwheel, is the emblem of the gear that transmits the movement, and derives from the image of the concentric centres that often recur in her work. Rosanna Bianchi Piccoli is a ceramist in the anthropological sense that Claude Lévi-Strauss attributed to a potter, considered a “mediator” because clay requires firing and therefore fire, a sign of the celestial people, and water, a sign of the underground chthonian world. (The Jealous Potter, Claude Lévi-Strauss).
About the artist
Rosanna Bianchi Piccoli was born in Milan in 1929. After Art School, she studied at the Academy of Brera, with Guido Ballo, Carlo Carrà and Mauro Reggiani. In the fifties she began to travel to deepen her studies and experiences in the field of ceramics. In Milan she met Lucio Fontana and compared her discoveries with artists and fellow people from her generation including, Aldo and Marirosa Ballo, Ugo and Nini Mulas, Dario Fo, Giò and Arnaldo Pomodoro, Alik Cavaliere and Bobo Piccoli, whom she married in 1965.
Between 1957 and 1963 she was appointed by E.N.A.P.I., Ente Nazionale Artigianato e Piccole Industrie, to carry out an experimental socio-ethno-anthropological research through the comparison with local craft pottery workshops in Abruzzo, Marche and Sicily, to develop a new contemporary language about the historical Italian terracotta.
Work from that period was exhibited at the Atheneum in Helsinki, Finland, at the Konstmuseet, Göteborg, at the Svea Galleriet, in Stockholm, Sweden, at the Louisiana Museum, outside Copenhagen, Denmark, and finally at the Galleria Il Sestante in Milan.
Rosanna Bianchi Piccoli worked from 1958 to 1983 with the Galleria Il Sestante in Milan, together with Ettore Sottsass jr., Arnaldo and Gio Pomodoro, Bobo Piccoli, Hans von Klier and many others, where she held numerous solo exhibitions, the first of which took place in 1959. In the sixties and seventies she also developed ceramic research in design projects for La Rinascente, Pirex Ware, Richard Ginori, Megalopolis of Agneta Holst.
Among her numerous exhibitions, in 1972 she took part in the XXXVI Venice Biennale. In 2010 the MIC, International Ceramic Museum in Faenza, dedicates a large anthological exhibition to her. In 2015 The Triennale di Milan presented 100 pieces of faience in the solo exhibition “Concentricity and Concentration” – curated by Silvana Annichiarico. And in 2019 the Museo del Design Italiano of the Triennale selected one of her works for the permanent exhibition. Her vessels are in numerous public and private collections including Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein; La Triennale, Milan; MIC, Faenza; MIAAO, Turin; Museum of Ceramics, Pesaro.
© Rosanna Bianchi Piccoli, Foto Melina Mulas
DETAILS:
Rosanna Bianchi Piccoli
Unique Pieces
10 Corso Como, Milan
Opening, Thursday, 24th October 2019
On display from 25th October 2019 to 6th January 2020
Daily 10.30 to 19.30.
Wednesday and Thursday, 10.30 to 21.00.
Photo credits: Rosanna Bianchi Piccoli, Melina Mulas, 10 Corso Como
Mari Balsamà Wilson 
Leave a comment