Giampaolo Bertozzi and Stefano Dal Monte Casoni were born respectively in Borgo Tossignano, Bologna in 1957 and Lugo di Romagna, Ravenna in 1961.
Bertozzi and Casoni started their artistic training in the Istituto Statale d’Arte per la Ceramica in Faenza, Italy and continued their studies at the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Bologna. After completing their studies, the two artists created a company (1980) and participated in many events that focused on "new ceramics".
Their first creations in thin polychrome majolica are characterized by talent in the creation and detached irony. An important collaboration (1985-1990) is the one with the Cooperativa Ceramica in Imola where they worked as researchers in the Ceramics Experimentation and Research Center. In 1987 and 1988 they collaborated, also producing covers, with "K International Ceramics Magazine". In the 90s, a more conceptual and radical aspect emerged in their work: their ceramics were becoming monumental and overwhelming in linguistics and realization. In 1990, they designed fountains and monumental sculptures for Tama, a new district in Tokyo. Dating 1993 is the large panel “Ditelo con i fiori” (Say it with flowers) outside the Imola Civil Hospital.
Their sculptures – symbolic, mocking and pervaded by a sense of attraction towards what is fleeting, transitory, perishable and in decay – have become internationally recognized icons of a not only contemporary human condition. The corrosive irony of their works is always counterbalanced by a stainless executive perfectionism. Between compositional surrealism and formal hyperrealism, Bertozzi and Casoni investigate the wastes of contemporary society without excluding the cultural ones: from those of the past to those of the closest artistic trends. Icons such as the Brillo box in the Pop Art or the cans of Artist's shit by Piero Manzoni find, in a refined ceramic version that investigates their obsolescence and degradation, both the signs of an irreparably past time and a freezing in an arrangement which, conversely, entrust them to a truly immortal destiny.
