Vase by Domenico Matteucci

Large ceramic vase with abstract decor by Domenico Matteucci , Italian Artist and ceramist from Faenza .

Domenico Matteucci is known above all as an artist with ceramics but he was also a draftsman and painter with multiform aspects. Artist with an aristocratic spirit, Matteucci has always resided in Faenza where he led a singular and free life as an artist far from the pressures of having to do daily and often renouncing any commitment that did not correspond to his needs and to long times of conception and execution. . A natural reluctance prevented him from participating in exhibitions, competitions and those art events that would have allowed him to be more adequately considered. An excessive dose of self-criticism, which led to the destruction of many works, precluded him from any dialogue with the market. The knowledge and appreciation of his work are still today, inevitably, limited to the Faenza and Romagna areas. After a limited attendance at the Royal School of Ceramics in Faenza, Matteucci attended the Art School of Bologna and completed his studies with a two-year course of architecture. Already in the Thirties he demonstrated remarkable plastic skills that knew how to avoid both the emphatic figure of Domenico Rambelli and the return to truth advocated by Angelo Biancini. They are elegant and refined works that herald the deconstruction of the form that will be able to fully develop in the immediate post-war period, with almost informal figurative results. As a sculptor, the artist obtained awards and also performed works of considerable dimensional commitment: large panel exhibited at the National Ceramic Competition in 1947; Footprint of Christ in 1969 at the Faenza Cemetery; Monument to the fallen of Faenza in 1979; Wall of the wind from 1986, also in Faenza. As a painter, Matteucci is gradually attracted to various expressive possibilities that he often drops, even if he does not complete the work in progress. If in some works the teaching of Giovanni Romagnoli is recognizable, in others (polyptych of San Giovanni Bosco from 1957 for the Church of San Biagio di Forlì) the figuration is strengthened between surrealist hyperrealism and fake devotional naivety.