Ceramic mosaic art

For thousands of years, ceramics has accompanied mankind not only as a material used for everyday objects, but also as a creative means of expression of different cultures. One of these variations and styles are ceramic mosaics with geometric or figurative representations. Art in this or any other way not only enriches our lives, but also has an image-building and identity-forming effect when it is visible in museums or in public.

A current example for this was inaugurated in Pirmasens in mid-December 2019. There, the bird staircase, which covers an area of approximately 60 square metres and probably is the largest ceramic mosaic in Rhineland-Palatinate, was created. The project, which is unique in this form in Germany, was drafted and realized under the direction of the internationally operating Chilean artist Isidora Paz-López.

Art and ceramics

The technical basis of this extraordinary work are ceramic tiles from two leading German brands, which have supported the whole thing through material sponsoring. For the components of the large-size mural created on site in Pirmasens, products from Agrob Buchtal (ChromaPlural series) and Villeroy & Boch tiles (Pro Architectura series) were used, as they best met the artist's conceptions with regard to their variety of nuances and look. These aspects are relevant in so far as the artwork consists of splendid colourful motifs from flora and fauna: the latter in the form of native, international or now no longer existing bird species, in order to subtly draw attention to their extinction due to climate or environmental changes. In Pirmasens, a significant advantage of ceramics comes in particularly useful: thanks to absolute light-fastness, fading or other undesirable visual changes are not an issue, even in case of exposure to intense sunlight, so that permanent colour fidelity is guaranteed.

Background and chronology

Like ancient Rome, Pirmasens is built on seven hills and therefore characterized by steps and slopes. In addition, the city with 42,000 inhabitants is crossed by two large rock faces from north to south. The contact with Isidora Paz-Lopez was established already in 2016. Soon the idea was born to use her high-quality and colourful mosaic art for Pirmasens in order to make rather dreary corners of the city more attractive - for example the heavily frequented former rock and current bird staircase. In autumn 2018, the city council then entrusted Isidora Paz-López with the artistic realization of the original basic idea. Parallel to the production of the mosaic surfaces, a renovation of the staircase, which was due anyway, was carried out from summer to autumn 2019. This was followed by the laying of the ceramic mosaics and in mid-December 2019 by the official inauguration of the functional building. Rolf Schlicher (Head of City Marketing) was just as enthusiastic as Mayor Markus Zwick, who spoke of an extraordinary eye-catcher in the urban cityscape.

Artist and oeuvre

Isidora Paz‐López was born in Chile in 1976 and discovered her artistic streak and love for ceramics already at a very early age. Her oeuvre includes various mosaic art projects in public space, e.g. in Aruba, Stuttgart or in her home country Chile: there, for example, in Puente Alto (a large community in the south of the capital Santiago de Chile), she designed the previously rather unadorned town hall with an international team of 60 people and several underground stations with an international team of 100 people, covering an almost unbelievable total area of around 4,000 square metres.