Floriano Gheno's life has been permeated since his birth in 1940 by a bond to his hometown 'Nove' , in province of Vicenza, where he still lives and works.
In that young and joyous town that marked its name in the Italian and European ceramic history in a few centuries, one could breathe the air of renewal of the post war period . The eighteenth-century " Regia school of ceramics art " had allowed a cultural and artistic ferment otherwise difficult in a little provincial town. Nevertheless, Gheno got the opportunity to attend the local school of art in a period of renewal that gave a push to various potters. He can thus be compared with ceramic art masters like Andrea Parini and Giovanni Petucco , and subsequently with Pompeo Pianezzola and Alessio Tasca.

From the former he grasped the ability to pay attention to develop and cure techniques aimed at giving a method, from the latter the acquired a new teaching method focusing at promoting interpretative freedom. He specialized at the Institute of Art in Velletri in Rome, where his fondness for the potter's wheel rather than for the use of plaster moulds made him understand better some aspects of traditional artisanship. He undertook the potter's apprenticeship at his teacher Petucco's company where he worked till 1970. Later he proposed himself as a consultant for different ceramic firms of Vicenza. Maestro Petucco and his teachings were a point of reference for whole generations of potters from Nove. Gheno then became a teacher of art, initially teaching moulding and later teaching ceramic decoration at the state institute of art " G Fabris ", where he worked till the 1998. Since then he has worked as a freelance and has won numerous prizes during his career. His works are in museums throughout the world.

His passion for art has translated in a continuous research in painting and since the seventies it has transformed into abstracts and bright colour flashes.
On a parallel path that accompanies his pictorial production as well as ceramics, some recurrent elements that have been faced and developed in endless variations have been gathered. Teaching and the daily contact with students of the institute of art have contributed to maintain a lively attention and enabled him to gather interesting ideas for subsequent elaboration. In the eighties Gheno realizes that the use of wide flat brushes, seldom used in ceramic field, could be investigated in a more exhaustive manner. A concept that is being developed even today, and in 1990 it consented him to enter the Faenza contest. Even the use of holes and cuts, creditable to the conceptual works by Fontana or to the more incisive works by Leoncillo, have become a part of the decorative Gheno's repertoire. Combinations of geometric forms with no written original meaning can be freely interpreted .

But it is not only about geometric forms. With time these become symbols and harmonious figures with soft colours, often sustained by an opaque enamel that mitigate the visual impact. These small technical calculations are dictated by his will to put himself to test and derive from continuous search for a personal answer to the call of the ceramic subject. The models that support the decoration have grown in dimension over the years becoming great shields and ample vases from dishes and bowls. These are neither simple technical virtuosities nor mere decoration, but a choice pondered to light through an experience matured over the years.

After decades of activity , Floriano Gheno has not stopped experimenting. The latest results of his research have inclined him to recuperate the use of little brushes and printing spongies enabling him to define trough a chromatic shades, the sinuous shapes that he weaves on the surfaces of the great supporting dishes, spheres and big shields. A further enrichment is given by the insertion of plastic elements that recall the pre-Columbian art or however the predominance of graphic elements of primitive populations. It is not a homage to the genuine synthetics of exotic forms, but a respectful re-interpretation of the cultured spirit in those figures. Harmonies that are repeated thanks to a work that exploits the change of the colours in firing phase to obtain unusual tones and tonality. Once again, in the irregular regularity of the swift movements of the brush, geometrical forms blend emotions and find a concrete exit from the mere post industrial decor.