Paolo Staccioli began his career as an artist in the 1970s, starting out as a painter. In the early 1990s, the need to experiment with a new artistic vocabulary urged him to move to a workshop in Sant’Andrea in Faenza, where he produced his first vases. In the beginning, he adopted the glazed ceramic technique, then gradually experimenting with “reduction” technique firing, which allowed him to achieve extraordinary iridescence and sheen. Staccioli then set up his own studiocum-workshop in Florence, where he continued under his own steam to experiment on daily basis with the use of fire and of copper oxides, producing vases which he then decorated with imaginary figurative narratives fixed for eternity by an enamel sheen. These works earned him his first true recognition and success. The characters that populated the surface of his ceramics soon acquired a third dimension, translating into sculptures. Warriors, travellers, cardinals and horses to add their lively touch to major public and private collections both in Italy and abroad. In early 2000 he began to translate his ideas into the more lasting medium of bronze. Paolo Staccioli has won an enormous amount of praise and recognition both from critics and from the general public.