Gilda&Co, the versatile Milanese space devoted to Italian design, presents from November 21, 2025 the exhibition IL BATTITO DEL PICCHIO. The Fantastical World of Enzo Bioli’s Ceramics, a survey honoring Enzo Bioli—painter, graphic designer, scenographer, designer, and ceramist—featuring over 150 pieces designed by Bioli for “Il Picchio,” the Parma-based ceramics workshop he founded in 1967 and active until 1985. This workshop produced a renowned range of both serial and artistic works recognized nationally and internationally.
Gilda&Co, opened in 2024 in Via Plinio, born from the experience of Daniele Lorenzon and Compasso, a historic showroom that for more than twenty years has explored the best of 20th-century design, continues its mission to investigate and tell international design through essay-style exhibitions with IL BATTITO DEL PICCHIO. The Fantastical World of Enzo Bioli’s Ceramics, dedicated to Bioli’s production for “Il Picchio.”
From the vast COMPASSO archive—consisting of objects, works of art, documents, and photographs—the idea emerged and was quickly embraced by design historian Anty Pansera: to devote a show to Enzo Bioli, a true “artiere” as Pansera defines him, capable of uniting diverse arts in the act of making, in project, and in craft discipline. The same name and logo Bioli chose for his workshop, “Il Picchio,” with which he signed every piece, including the more than 150 works in the exhibition, seems to reference this rare gift: Bioli himself drew the logo, giving the workshop a hand-drawn graphic identity with a simple brush mark—“Il Picchio – PR.”—that evokes the artisanal and local origin of the workshop rather than an industrial brand. Moreover, the woodpecker, a hardworking and rhythmic bird, becomes a metaphor for the continuous, precise labor of the ceramic workshop, with the beak’s tapping echoing the turning wheel and the furnace’s cycle that transforms clay into a production line.
Enzo Bioli was born in Parma in 1932. He trained in Scenography at the Paolo Toschi Art Institute, studying with masters such as Latino Barilli, Renato Vernizzi, Enrico Bonaretti, and Umberto Lilloni. After three years at Brera Academy, he completed his artistic education at Bologna. His career begins as a painter, participating in prizes and exhibitions locally and nationally, earning several awards. A versatile artist, Bioli also pursued graphics, scenography, design, and ceramics. In 1960 he held his first solo show at Galleria del Teatro, and in 1967 he founded the “Il Picchio” workshop, active until 1985, whose pieces were already highlighted by the esteemed Domus in 1968. Deeply tied to Parma’s cultural life, he held notable roles including cultural and theater assessor (1977) and president of A.T.E.R. and E.R.T., important regional theater bodies.
The exhibition IL BATTITO DEL PICCHIO. The Fantastical World of Enzo Bioli’s Ceramics thus showcases Bioli’s ceramic production: lamps, planters, money boxes, vases, ashtrays, cups, and plates—objects that respond to a coherent and recognizable language, founded on modularity and assembly, designed to interact with one another rather than stand alone. Bioli’s style looks to the future while preserving ties to everyday life: his “space age” forms, composed of glossy semi-spheres, circular mouths, and truncated-conical bases, reveal an interest in an international imagination reinterpreted with natural ease in ceramic materials. Stoneware and full glazes—orange, ultramarine blue, glossy black—give the objects an intense presence, capable of withstanding time and adapting to both shop window light and a home living room.
Each piece signed “Il Picchio” belongs to a recognizable formal family, traceable also through color variants, conceived to build a harmonious, dynamic space together with other pieces.
Curator Anty Pansera writes: “If I should leave a reading criterion for someone leafing through this leporello, I would say: look at how the pieces offer themselves to hand and light. Il Picchio does not merely make ‘plates’ and ‘vases’: it builds small machines of use where form is always a solution—not a whim.”
Alessandro Pedretti adds: “Gilda inaugurates a new episode in the exploration of design and creativity; the Picchio ceramics stand as signs of a decade past, yet today they appear more alive than ever in their expressive strength and vision of a fantastical world of shapes, languages, and colors to create a stunning environmental ‘living-space’.”
Bringing together such a miscellany of utilitarian and artistic works allows us to fully understand the power of a unique, surprising, and identity-defining episode of Enzo Bioli’s craft and know-how. Enjoy the viewing!
Photo credits: Gilda&Co
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