Welcome to
An ancient face, an eternal mystery, a beat in time
with Claudia Ciotti’s works
This Virtual Exhibition dedicated to Claudia Ciotti is not only a journey through time; it is also an unveiling of how a contemporary artist can reinterpret the art of the past through the eyes of the world of today – with the added problem stemming from the use of refractory clay as a base – making her an artist rather than rare, unique.
Claudia Ciotti embodies the quintessential blend between artisan and artist. Her works fuse these two souls masterfully. The craftswoman sees to the development of the product in detail and therefore all the phases that refractory clay must pass through in order to emerge as a solid if out-of-the-ordinary creative base. The artist then transforms it into a work of art. Here you view not simple reproductions, but genuine artworks, which can be created only by the precise and skillful hand of someone who is aware of the enormous difficulties one encounters when painting on refractory clay, or terracotta in general.
There are no margins of error, no brushstroke can be corrected, the dosage of the color cannot be altered and, above all, until the work comes out from firing in special ovens, it exists only in the mind of the artist.
In fact, the colors are often markedly different in their initial consistency from what the result will be after firing, reds that look like lifeless browns or greens like nondescript grays.
There is nothing to help the neophyte imagine what the final outcome might be.
In addition to facing the difficulties inherent in the production process, Claudia Ciotti demonstrates her deep passion for, on the one hand, the works of the Masters of the early centuries of the Second Millennium, reproducing what was at the time executed on canvas or wooden boards to embellish churches or shrines, and on the other for works in the Art Nouveau style of the early 1900s. An art that requires love, passion, and realizing how to understand and interpret what the artists sought to transmit in their own time.
Last but not least, the creative talent of the artist, who, independently of the works she alludes to, has to her credit a series of creations which are striking for the accuracy and refinement of the details as well as for their engaging beauty.
With her works Claudia Ciotti paid homage to some of the greatest protagonists of Italian art history, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, passing from Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Simone Martini, Gentile da Fabriano, Sandro Botticelli up to one of the most interesting exponents of Art Nouveau which was the Czechoslovakian Mucha, studying them, investigating them, trying to grasp the secrets of their composition and chromatism, to entrust them to support that enhances their legibility, preserving the communicative value of the history of art and reaffirming the belonging to all of us of this particular expression of the culture of all times ”.
The attention to detail, the chromatic nuances, and the decorative motifs in gold and platinum give new vitality to the work of art, moving it away from the solemn aura of the Museum, to bring it into everyday culture and make it accessible to a wider audience.
To learn more, just click on the title to admire the work directly in our gallery.
We wish you a pleasant visit!
