“investigates the surge of ceramic research and experimentation in Italy during the postwar years”

Postwar Italian Ceramics investigates the surge of ceramic research and experimentation in Italy in the postwar years. From Venice’s Biennial to Milan’s Triennial, Italy began to demonstrate an original way of modelling clay and grès, with a new vision of the material and its ateliers, classical shapes were formed alongside experimental ones, putting together craftsmanship, design and art, with majestic grace and knowledge.

Clay became an excellent aesthetic space, with complex borders between usefulness and abstraction, utility and beauty were entangled together.

Lucio Fontana experimented modelling and the abstract, holes, cuts and shapes referenced the baroque period; Franco Garelli created lyrical segments and his multi-shaped thorns composed by articulated levels; Leoncillo Leonardi invented informal lava flows; and Fausto Melotti conceived classical shapes with a highly ritual dimension recalling mythical traditions.