Large polychrome ceramic vase by Marcello Fantoni

È grande colui che usa vasi d’argilla come se fossero d’argento

Lucio Anneo Seneca, L’Arte di Vivere, I sec. d.C.

After an early apprenticeship, as a pupil of the ceramist Carlo Guerrini at the Porta Romana Art Institute in Florence, Marcello Fantoni took sculpture lessons from Libero Andreotti and Bruno Innocenti and drawing lessons from Gianni Vagnetti.
In 1936 he started the Fantoni Ceramics Manufacture. Between the end of the 1940s and the end of the 1950s, the company reached a staff of more than fifty collaborators, including turners and decorators. Between 1950 and 1970 his ceramics achieved some international success.

A great experimenter of the subject, he interprets the various artistic currents from the twentieth century to primitivism, from cubism to abstractionism, up to the informal and minimalism of the latest works. The singularity of each of his creations, on the one hand, depends on the fact that he uses an archaic and primitive material such as clay (clay), painted only and exclusively by hand; on the other, it is due to the combination of the Italian tradition of ceramics with international contemporary artistic research.

Many of his creations have entered private collections and the most important museums around the world: from the Metropolitan Museum in New York to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, from the MoMAK in Kyoto to the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza and the Uffizi. In recent years, in his International School of Ceramic Art, Fantoni has dedicated himself to teaching and experimenting with high-temperature firing.

Product details
Designer: Marcello Fantoni
Dimensions: 30 x 30 x 64cm

Availability: Sold – Not Available