Ravenna

I've been lucky enough to spend a short time in Ravenna in Italy recently.  It is famous for its mosaics - amazing Roman and Byzantine examples - but also for contemporary mosaic work.  It has a famous mosaic school, established to revive the skills necessary for restoring historic mosaics, but by the middle of the 20th century the artists moved on to designing and making contemporary mosaics too.  Ravenna now holds a festival every two years, with exhibitions of work by mosaic artists from across the world.  These cover a wide range of subjects, styles and materials.  I'll post more pictures in due course, but here are just a few examples of the lighter side of the art of the mosaicists in Ravenna - witty pieces and in spite of their informal subjects, still executed with great skill.