Renaissance techniques for contemporary ceramics
- Katia preserves Renaissance ceramics knowledge
- She followed in her father's footsteps by becoming a ceramicist
- Her own pieces are contemporary art
Born in the Umbrian hills, Katia Baldelli has made ceramics her full-time profession since 2001, following in the footsteps of her father, Renato. After several collaboration projects with other ceramicists, in 2004 she opened her workshop in her native Gubbio. Katia, who has a strong artistic education, culminating in a degree in Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Perugia, is the heiress of the great tradition of 16th-century Eugubine ceramics. She has dedicated herself to this craft for years with philological commitment, and explores European museums to see the originals. Her work has led her to create her own contemporary pieces for which research on time is central. Katia integrates visual poetry into her pieces, in a lively dialogue with traditional techniques, such as the Renaissance luster of Mastro Giorgio.
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INTERVIEW
I was born and raised in it. My father passed on his passion and knowledge to me, and I never stopped. As a child he used to take me with him to see the firing of pieces that he then painted at home. In 2001, after the Twin Towers, due to the decline in American customers, my father closed his business, and I opened my own.
The fact that I take my time back, doing things no one asks me to do. It is a search for harmony and a mediation between the fast, hyper-connected time of contemporaneity, which is imposed on us, and the necessarily very slow timeframes of ceramics: a contemplative and liberating dimension, a form of estrangement.
In my contemporary pieces, the repetitiveness of the ritual procedure in a contemplative dimension, in balance between interiority and the external world, is very important. I do not paint a subject. Handwriting brings out the image of my work. In a way, it is a similar approach to the work of Roman Opalka.
Yes, even if you cannot see it. In my works I bring the slowness and method of Renaissance ceramics, with meticulous painting made of small gestures using small brushes. It takes many hours to repeat the writing. This comes in contrast to fast, mechanised processes, such as serigraphy.
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