Giampaolo Bertozzi & Stefano Casoni

Bertozzi & Casoni was founded in 1980 in Imola by Giampaolo Bertozzi (born in Borgo Tossignano, Bologna, in 1957) and Stefano Dal Monte Casoni (born in Lugo di Romagna, Ravenna, in 1961). From their early studies at the Ceramic Art Institute of Faenza, their interests gravitated towards engaging with the great artistic traditions, while cultivating an original vocation for experimentation in sculpture, recognising in ceramics the potential for “painted sculpture”.

Bertozzi & Casoni went on to attend the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and participated in exhibitions promoting a “new ceramics”, aiming to bridge the gap between this expressive medium and the so-called major arts. Their first creations were small-scale works in thin polychrome majolica.

Their pictorial virtuosity gave way to an objective rendering of form. Themes drawn from the artistic traditions of “vanitas” and “memento mori” underwent a fantastical transformation, their realistic depiction minimising the artist’s hand while transcending temporal context. This shift opened a new chapter of “contemplations of the present”, in which their so-called “epic of trash” — an exploration of the fleeting, perishable, and decaying — became an internationally recognised reflection on the human condition.

Between compositional surrealism and formal hyperrealism, Bertozzi & Casoni have spent years investigating the refuse of contemporary society, both cultural and artistic. Their work is marked by a constant interplay between decay and renewal, overlooked beauty and rediscovery, abstraction and representation, impermanence and eternity, imagination and technical mastery — a body of work that has attracted the attention of critics, museums, and leading Italian and international galleries.