MARCELLO FANTONI
(1915-2011)
The work of Marcello Fantoni, Tuscan by birth and heart, spans a period of over seventy years and is characterized by continuous and original artistic research, rooted in his belief that the archaic means of the ceramicist harbors an unbroken expressive potential that can be released from the union of form-fire-material and color.
In 1927, he enrolled at the Porta Romana Art Institute in Florence to study ceramic art, where he benefited from the teachings of Carlo Guerrini, then artistic director of the Cantagalli factory, the sculptors Libero Andreotti and Bruno Innocenti and the painter Gianni Vagnetti. They encouraged the artistic versatility of the young Fantoni, his curiosity about materials and glazes, the plastic sense of the sculptor and the chromatic sense of the painter.
He graduated in 1934 and worked as artistic director of a ceramics factory in Perugia before returning to Florence in 1936 to set up the Manifat tura Ceramiche Fantoni. Since then, Fantoni has produced individual pieces alongside series, figurative groups, sculptures, and large-scale architectural works.
Early exhibitions in Florence (1937) and the VII Milan Triennale (1940) ushered in the success that he consolidated in the 1950s. His works, result of continuous experimentation with the material and the exploration of various artistic currents from the XXth century, through Primitivism, Cubism and Abstractionism, to the Informel and Minimalism have entered important private collections and principal mu seums in the world, including the MoMA of New York, the V&A in London and the Museum of Modern Art of Tokyo and Kyoto.