ALDO AJO'

 Biography

Aldo Ajò was born in Gubbio on the 28th January 1901 from a rich and wealthy family. He studied in the humanistic field, and soon demonstrated to have a great interest in art. He went to the Art institute in Perugia. At a very young age he became painter and ceramist, working with the help of the artist of Terni, Ilario Ciaurro (in Gubbio from 1919 - 1920 with the "Eugubinian Potters Mastro Giorgio").
At the age of almost twenty one, in 1921, he was artistic director of the Umbrian Ceramic Society of the Rubboli Brothers in Gualdo Tadino, where he had the possibility of experimenting the techniques of majolics and metal shine.
After the experience in Gualdo, in 1926, he opened his own productive business, dealing with painting, graphics, ceramics and wrought iron and in 1927 he opened a shop with Roberto Frondizi called "Masters of iron".
He started participating in important exhibitions and manifestations, obtaining important recognitions and prizes.

In the early thirties his definite passover to the dell'art of ceramics.
His art shop dealed in useful objects, vases and decorative plates but also big decorative panels which could be considered as a compromise between his pictorial and his ceramical vocation.
For a few years he taught drawing at the Professional Institute of Gubbio, where he met Miss Ines Spogli, who first became his student and then his wife in 1949.

His activity was interrupted momentarily due to the second world war, a period in which the artist was forced to refuge himself outside Gubbio for racial reasons, as his father was a jew. During these years he dedicated himself to different tecniques such as (xylographic and material painting).















On his return to Gubbio, at the end of the war, he again worked in the ceramic field but also restored the glass windows of the Basilica of the St.Ubaldo, , which had been ruined by the war; (in 1938 he made the window of the right abse of the church of St. Francis).

He obtained important orders (including the panels of the ships "Giulio Cesare", "Andrea Doria", "Asia", "Africa") and many recognitions; he strengthened ties and friendships with important people of culture and art such as G. Dottori, L: Leoncillo, G.C. Argan, G. Ungaretti, G. Ponti, A. Morena, J. Fautrier, A. De Felice, U. Marvardi, E.Tabarrini, C. Betocchi.

His house became a meeting point and a lounge open to the most famous artists and poets of that period.
His hospitality was notorious, as was his great affection towards his many friends and his young friends which had learnt the art in his shop.

In the sixties and seventies he made panels for the Classic Liceo (High School) in Gubbio, for the Italian Aeronautical Society (Passignano, parish church), for the chapel of the S. Maria of Esch Sur Alzette Clinic and for the old age home at Bettemburg, in Luxemburg.

The "professor" worked until a few days before his death, at 81 years, on the 26th August 1982, realizing the commemorative tile of Gubbio "Comune of Europe", some of his works remained incompleted and are in his study, conserved as if the "maestro" had been working on them until yesterday.

His works are collected in many private and public institutions such as the International Museum of Ceramics of Faenza and the Artistic Industrial Museum of Naples.
Aldo Ajò didn't have children. Presently his wife, Mrs. Ines and her brother in law Alberto Spogli take care of the ceramic art shop in via dei Consoli.
His brothers: Ettore, the eldest, became a lawyer; Giuseppe, land surveyor; Franco, engineer, emigrated to Venezuela; the sister: Pia, moved to Varese with her husband Guido Volpe.