Blue medium onion/flask shaped vase by Marcello Fantoni
Signed to the base Fantoni
Italy, circa 1960
Provenance: sourced directly from the Fantoni family
Art & Design - Peter Woodward
Lapis blue asymmetric slab vase by Marcello Fantoni
Signed to the base by Fantoni himself, dated 1957
remains of a collection label to the rear
Italy, circa 1957
Provenance: sourced directly from the Fantoni family
This piece was exhibited in 2015 at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence
Also, it was published in the book: Marcello Fantoni by Sara Garvani De Paoli Edizioni D’Arte 2015
Signed to the base by Fantoni himself, dated 1960
Italy, circa 1960
Provenance: sourced directly from the Fantoni family
Rare pair of mid century Marcello Fantoni yellow glazed stoneware vases
The vases were acquired directly from Fantoni’s studio in Florence.
Signed to the underside, Fantoni, Italy
Priced for the pair
Born in Florence, Marcello Fantoni registered at the Institute of Art at Porta Romana in 1927 to attend the course The Art of Ceramics. He graduated in 1934 as a ‘maestro’ of art, and began working as a ceramist. In 1936 he established the Fantoni Ceramic studio.
His works can be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Fine Art of Boston, the Currier Gallery, the Syracuse Museum. In Britain they are in the Victoria and Albert Museum of London, the City Art Gallery of Manchester, at Royal Scottish Museum of Edinburg. In Japan they are present at the Museum of Modern Art of Tokyo and Kyoto. In Italy they are represented at the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza, the National Bargello Museum and at the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe of the Uffizi.
In 1970 he founded the International School of Ceramic Arts at his laboratory in via Bolognese in Florence where he continued to work and teach until his passing in 2011.
The overriding principle in Fantoni’s varied body of work was that his ceramics should have “…the simplicity of a beautiful colour on a well studied form”. But, in reality Marcello Fantoni ceramics represent much more than this. Marcello Fantoni’s ceramics embody a dichotomy where the timeless appeal of ancient or traditional Italian pottery was combined with archly Modernist and progressive movements.
Marcello Fantoni’s work fused painting, Primitivism, tradition, Modern art, the revival of craft, and the base material of clay itself. Some aspects of Marcello Fantoni’s ceramics – their spikey and angular shapes, with their forms reduced to multiple flat planes of colour bordered by inscribed sgraffito lines – suggest inspiration from Cubist painters Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.
Marcello Fantoni produced unique, often experimental, ‘studio’ works himself, and also designed numerous ‘ranges’ that translated the essentials of his experiments into pieces that could be put into serial production. Nevertheless, every ceramic is unique in its own right as it was decorated by hand.