Biography – Paolo Miceli Sculptor

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ARTISTBIOGRAPHY

My story, my art

ARTISTBIOGRAPHY

My story, my art
Art entered my life very early, almost quietly, only to later become an essential presence. Already during middle school, I attended the Lolli Art Studio, where I discovered the fascination of drawing and learned to observe the world through details—those small elements that still represent the soul of my work today.

From the very beginning, I felt the need to transform emotions, thoughts, and visions into tangible forms. My first exhibition at the Flash Art Museum in Trevi marked the first step of a journey that, over the years, has been enriched through study, research, and experimentation.

Sculpture became the language through which I express my sensitivity. I have dedicated much time to the study of the human figure, and especially the face, fascinated by its ability to tell stories, emotions, and identities. Thanks to encounters with artists such as Giuseppe Spina and Nora Kersh, I deepened my expressive research, learning to seek in the artwork not only form, but also the life it holds within.

Between 2010 and 2011, I expanded my training by attending courses with master Maurizio Lauri in goldsmithing and with Mara Garbarino in Raku ceramics. These were different but complementary experiences that taught me respect for materials and the value of experimentation. During the same period, my exhibition activity intensified, particularly through my collaboration with the IRTUS Gallery in Sutri.

PAOLOMICELISCULPTOR

2012 was a year of significant recognition. I won third place in the OpenArt Prize, was selected among the finalists of the “Donne in Rinascita” competition at the Passepartout Gallery, and two of my works were admitted to the 6th Contemporary Art Biennial of Ferrara.

In the same year, I took part in the 30th edition of the Premio Firenze, where I had the honor of receiving the Golden Florin, ranking first in the Sculpture section. I consider this award not a final achievement, but a stimulus to continue my artistic journey with even greater dedication.

Today, I continue to shape matter guided by the same passion that has accompanied me from the very beginning: the pursuit of beauty, harmony, and emotion.

Each work is born from the desire to give form to what words often cannot express, transforming an intuition into something alive, capable of entering into dialogue with those who observe it.

The face is at the center of my work. I consider it the mirror and canvas of the soul: a place where identity, memory, and emotions become visible. Faces tell life stories, carrying both the beauty and the turmoil within each of us. They are our passport.

My artistic path was strengthened through my encounter with the work of Anna Coleman Ladd and her efforts with facially disfigured soldiers from the First World War, which confirmed for me the value of the face as a space of restoration, dignity, and humanity.

I work with metal because I perceive it as a living material. In the crucible, brought to a liquid state, metal frees itself and transforms. The blowtorch is, for me, a drawing tool: the flame becomes both brush and pencil, guiding the flow of molten metal in a direct relationship between gesture and matter.

The moment that precedes casting is the one I feel most intensely: the material is in motion, unstable, temporarily free. Then comes the mold, cold and constraining, which restores form and stillness. From this passage emerge faces and hands that, although solidified, retain the memory of that original energy.

My sculpture is born from this tension between freedom and form, between living matter and fixed matter, as an attempt to make visible what exists before stillness.