Romano Ranieri, was born in Torgiano in 1935.

Fifty years of experience in ceramic world allowed him to be included among the great artists and experts about the more sophisticated pottery techniques.

He was able to transpose sophisticated oil paintings, frescoes and watercolors on ceramic, a matter very hard to treat.

His artworks are present in prestigious art galleries all over the world as Museum of Modern Art of Basilea (Switzerland), in a lot of Churches, in the streets and in the squares of famous cities. In Chicago, inside the Scalabrinan Institute in North Lake, Romano Ranieri realized fifty-two ceramic panels 150 x 100 cm each one, representing the most important New Testament episodes. 

He has taken part to numerous National and International Expositions where he has won prestigious awards and critically acclaimed.

Despite his ‘gift’, Romano Ranieri was a very secretive and simple man, who didn’t like to talk about him.

His purpose was to leave, through his artwork, a trace of high quality in ceramic context and to be able to be a source of inspiration for future generations. Romano has always been taught his artistic and technical knowledge to his disciples, without reservation, to produce high quality ceramics.

Very good painters have been formed thanks to his teaching and now they sustain, with their artworks, the good name of Deruta. 

Romano Ranieri has a special relationship with ceramic. By the early ’50s he learns the first principles about majolica painting thanks to his father’s friendship with Ugo Bajano. His talent in drawing was appreciated by the most representative members about ceramic of that period. After graduation, in fact, Romano were recruited by Gaetano Ermellini, patron of Grazia Ceramiche; then he worked for Lamberto Mancinelli, while he was perfecting his artistic talent at the night school founded by Mancinelli and professor Danilo Segoloni, where he had as teachers Leo Ravazzi, Gino Felicini and the Derutan painter Cesare Teobaldo Pimpinelli. Pimpinelli was the most representative painter for artisan craft of Deruta Majolica, thanks to the precious teaching of David Zipirovic. An artist from Cherson (Ukraine), trained at the Odessa Fine Arts Academy and architecture graduated in Paris. Then the trip to Italy, the way artists used to do at the time, to improve by observing personally Classical artworks of Renaissance. His style characterised by skilful use of colours, applied to free interpretation of classical Italian art motifs, renewed the traditions and the expression forms of ceramic.

After almost ten years Romano Ranieri investigated Zipirovic ceramic painting and he continued Zipirovic way, improving it. But Romano lets his imagination run riot in paint on canvas. 

Romano said about contemporary art: ”I respect contemporary artworks but I think that every form of artistic expression cannot be separeted from harmony principles. The ‘perception of beauty’ exists, even if is a subjective judgment .

In questa prospettiva, l’arte ceramica di Romano Ranieri rientra pienamente in quello che Giulio Busti, in una rassegna critica dedicata alla storia della ceramica umbra, chiamava “il senso del classico” per indicare il filo comune che lega, dietro un altrimenti incomprensibile eclettismo, le produzioni regionali legate ad una solida tradizione di origine rinascimentale.

Romano Ranieri, true expert of ceramic techniques an history, founded, together with partners, the School named for him. ‘If my father – Romano said – didn’t meet Ugo Bajano, I’d have just been a painter on canvas. I’m so happy it ended this way’.

He left the morning of January 26 2015, silently and discreetly how he lived. He was a life example.