Carlo Zauli, 'Distorto' vase with finger prints, Faenza, Italy, 1972

In the artistic career of Carlo Zauli, the 1960s and 1970s were a period of great uproar and changes.
From a production of ceramics still strongly linked to both, tradition and functionalism, where decoration was central, through constant contacts with the contemporary artistic avant-gardes (the brothers Arnaldo and Gio Pomodoro, Leoncillo Leonardi, Afro, among others), Zauli's poetics moved towards a vision of the art object as an abstract, pure work, unrelated to any figurative appeal.
The interest in the tactile aspects of materials stands out in Zaulis's research during the late 1960s, leading him to obtain a rich range of different kinds of stoneware, from the monochrome white, later known as "Bianco di Zauli", to an intense blue.
The vase presented here (signed on the bottom), made in 1972, represents a pinnacle in this regard.
The stoneware has a beautiful, deep blue hue; the glazed surface features an all-over craquelure effect, unusual in Zauli's work of the period. The tactile quality is emphasized by the fingermarks in the clay before firing, which, while decorative, also conveys the artist's mastery over the material he shapes.