Biography

Known both as a painter and a ceramist, Arnaldo Miniati was born in Florence in 1909. A highly skilled technician, in the years after the Second World War, in his hometown, he founded a ceramic laboratory called “Miniati Ceramiche” where he realises a production of refined serial pieces alongside from artist monotypes inspired by an austere archaism. The “Miniati” manufactory realises, under the owner’s artistic direction, a production consisting of unique pieces with a sculptural imprint and an archaic flavour and a series of decorative and furnishing objects in series destined for marketing. In 1951 the company presented its production at the 15th Florence Handicraft Exhibition. The enterprising Miniati also stands out within the Compagnia del Paiolo, an association that was reborn in the 1950s to “promote and nurture an artistic and cultural atmosphere worthy of Florentine traditions” on the consolidated history of its origins dating back to 1512, as documented Vasari in his Lives. Artist, entrepreneur and cultural activist, Miniati died in 1979, in his hometown. Typically Florentine, also for his gruff and polemical character, passionate both for art and good food, he is remembered as a dynamic person but also very habitual, to the point of going exclusively to the usual tobacconist to buy the usual cigars.

Philosophy

Strongly linked to the classical style, Miniati paints figuratively, preferring landscapes and still lifes as subjects of his works. In this way he develops, and will always keep it, a nineteenth-century style: his love for classicism is such that he even wrote an essay on the subject entitled Michelangelo’s lack of influence on modern painting, published in the second half of the 1970s. In addition to being a very talented painter, sculptor and ceramist, Miniati has a strong passion for cooking, so much so that he has written several books on the subject, where he recounts the recipes of Italian gastronomy discovered during his numerous trips to the Peninsula, such as the Cooking stories or The logbook, which contain notes and drawings that have food as a central theme. Miniati is described by Sergio Baldi, his friend who helped him a lot in the last year of his life, after the artist was seized by paresis, as a person attentive to everything that constituted novelty and discovery: mixing his passions and creating new I continue ceramics, paintings, art or cookery books, he has always invited others to try new experiences, embodying the example of a person who has always tried to go beyond “limits”.

Artwork in Castagno

From this small ceramic table kept next to the entrance to Casa Paloscia in La Vigna (Castagno), one can sense the skill and skill of an expert ceramist of Arnaldo Miniati. It is a decorative and furnishing piece with a sculptural imprint. In line with the passion for “primitivism” unleashed throughout Europe between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, La Caccia (The Hunt) recalls the ancient cave paintings with hunting scenes found by archaeologists in prehistoric caves. The colours are bright and bright, the lines few and essential to form the figures of a hunter armed with a spear and two chased animals, through an extreme simplification of the signs. Curiosity: the walls of Casa Paloscia also house another hunting scene also by Miniati, but in monochrome ceramic relief, with some animals depicted while running; the subject is taken from Etruscan art.