Description

This is a really large beautiful vase created by the Italian abstract color field painter Piero Dorazio. He is known for paintings with thick bands of bright color and crosshatched grids, much like what you see on this vase. Notice the brushwork in the striped glaze. Later in his career Dorazio moved back to Umbria close to Todi.  We think that this is where and when he began creating these ceramics works -- possibly in conjunction with a ceramic studio there. P.S. We love how you can change the color combination just by turning the vase.

 Details

• Piero Dorazio (Italian, 1927-2005)
• Ceramic with white and multicolored glaze
  
• 17" tall, 8 1/2 " in diameter
  
• Initialed and stamped "Todi" on the bottom
• Excellent condition 

About the Designer

Piero Dorazio was an Italian abstract painter closely associated with lyrical abstraction and color field painting. After WWII he studied architecture at the University of Rome.  He was briefly attracted to the Futurists; but urned off by their right wing politics, he instead joined with a group of fellow left-leaning abstract artists to form Forma I in 1947. That same year Dorazio won a prize and a stipend from the French government to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1950 Dorazio, along with artists Mino Perilli and Guerrini, helped found L'Age d'Or, a bookstore/gallery space dedicated to abstract art. His increasing international exposure through artist organizations and publications eventually earned him an invitation to the International Summer Seminar at Harvard University in 1953.  That began a long series of stints in the United States, including a solo exhibition at George Wittenborn's One-Wall Gallery in NYC in October 1953 and a teaching position at the Graduate School of Fine Arts program at the University of Pennsylvania. He taught painting there for one semester each year from 1960 to 1969, splitting his time between the United States and Italy. In 1970 he returned to live and work full-time in Rome. In 1974 he moved his studio from Rome to Umbria, near Todi.  It was during that period that he may have begun his movement into ceramics as many of his creations are marked with the stamp of Todi. Dorazio continued to work and exhibit until a year before his death in 2005.

His work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale of 1952 and 1960, as well as the group show "The Responsive Eye" at MOMA in 1965.  The Knox-Albright Gallery in Buffalo and the André Emmerich Gallery in NYC also promoted his work.