Candido Fior (1942-2021) was a great innovator of Italian ceramics in the second half of the twentieth century, who conducted personal research that was radically unrelated to coeeve fashions and trends. He crafted his creations in his own home and workshop, in the rural area of San Martino di Lupari (near Padova).
To describe his work we repropose part of the insightful critical text by Franco Bertoni and Jolanda Silvestrini published in “Ceramica italiana del novecento” (Mondadori Electa, 2005): “His activity as sculptor and designer is inspired by the natural world and moments of a popular, mainly peasant culture [...]. The simplicity and essentiality most characteristic of the manifestations of nature or of those timeless objects that accompanied the poor generations of the past in life and work are, for Fior, the attractions and reasons for his research. This project [...] is accompanied by a predilection for small and minute, almost defenseless objects [...]. The material remains raw and sandy even in the case of the polychrome terracottas, as a memory of an earth that conforms into landscape, human artifact and everyday object.”