Biography

Born in Pescara in 1947, Roberto Cipollone (Ciro) spent his childhood days around his father’s artisan foundry.

Guided by a profound love for nature and simultaneously by a spiritual tension towards Beauty, from a very young age he sought to seize every opportunity to express his being through small artifacts, canvases, drawings, or engravings. His city soon saw him participating in various artistic initiatives.

In 1970, he was in the Netherlands, where he remained for six years working as a laborer. Reflecting on that period later, he said:

I made ten thousand screws a day. A very monotonous job. The creative aspect was sacrificed. It was a detachment from art. This heightened my desire to see beautiful things.

During this time, he meets and frequents a goldsmith who is also a sculptor. He thus finds, in his spare time, the opportunity to create art objects with him.

I used to bring Joop Falke things that were discarded because they were out of size or had some small defect.

Since 1977, he has been in Loppiano, near Florence, where he still lives and works. Here, in 1982, he opened “La bottega di Ciro,” an artistic workshop with a medieval flair. Unusual combinations are found here, and the poetry that can be contained in an old broken and rusted object is rediscovered. Rehabilitated, it speaks of the past and present, of the nobility of human life even in its most humble and forgotten aspects.

Since 1982, he has held numerous solo exhibitions in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Since 1991, he has been commissioned for sacred furnishings and environmental recovery interventions, both in Italy and abroad. Everywhere, his material art has been appreciated for the sense of simplicity, beauty, and humanity that it manages to communicate from a reality that may appear forgotten and neglected.

La Bottega di Ciro

Via Montelfi, 8
50064 – Loc. Loppiano
Incisa in Val d’Arno
Firenze – Italia
(+39) 055 8339703
info@labottegadiciro.it