1980s Italian Pottery Vase Signed Paolo Staccioli

This unusual art ceramic piece is an early and magnificent 7.5″ vase by renowned Italian artist Paolo Staccioli, featuring his famous horses in a golden-coppery reflective glaze. 
Rare and spectacular, and hardly ever found outside of Italian art galleries or museums, but on the few occasions they have been found at private sales in the USA, they often reach astronomical prices.

About the Artist:
Born in 1943 in Scandicci (Florence), Paolo Staccioli began painting as a teenager, and began working in ceramics in the 80’s.
Focusing on ceramics and terracotta bas-reliefs, and experimenting with glazes and oxygen-reduction firing, he then moved on to lustres, employing clay oxides and salts
Horses are a subject that Staccioli particularly loves, and are represented as virtual and immortal survivors of a battle, rising as tormented giants with bellies swollen from the strain. He poses his horses on a vertical axis in all his works, emphasizing the sense of upward movement that creates a sensation of relief and liberation.