Lot 52

FULVIO BIANCONI (1915-1996) "Once I loved to paint glass from the outside, now I love to paint it from the inside!" So Fulvio Bianconi said during an interview related to his work at the Venini furnaces in the 1950s. After a short experience as a glass decorator for the perfume firm Gi. Vi. Emme, Bianconi moved to Murano in 1946 at the age of 31 to develop his knowledge of glass. There, he finally met the man who had changed the Murano glass industry since the twenties: Paolo Venini, the creator of one of the very best Italian firms for art glass, the talent-scout who had discovered the genius of artists such as Vittorio Zecchin, Napoleone Martinuzzi, Tomaso Buzzi and Carlo Scarpa. The Milanese lawyer, with his smart eye, realized the great artistic potential of the young man from Padua as soon as he saw his first sketches and gave him the chance to create glass that would become masterpieces of 20th century design years later. Bianconi's first exhibit, presented at the XXIV Biennale d'Arte di Venezia in 1948, represented a moment of great change immediately after the Second World War. It included the Commedia dell'Arte, a group of twelve figurines, modeled mostly in lattimo, inspired by eighteenth-century Italian comedy and realized in a satirical way as a reaction to the "revival" of the ancient shapes used by other factories. At that moment many people realized that something really new had happened--Bianconi used glass in a new way, as a medium to create art.

AN 'INCALMO' GLASS FAN VASE

FULVIO BIANCONI FOR VENINI, CIRCA 1948

Details

AN 'INCALMO' GLASS FAN VASE
Fulvio Bianconi for Venini, Circa 1948
the upper portion with canes of 'zanfirico', acid-stamped venini murano ITALIA
8¼in. (21cm.) high

Provenance

Muriel Karasik Gallery, New York

Lot Essay

This model was presented at the XXV Biennale d'Arte di Venezia in 1950.
cf. Rossana Bossaglia, I Vetri Di Fulvio Bianconi, 1993, fig. 18; Venini Diaz de Santillana, Venini Catalogue Raisonné 1921-1986, p. 217; Ricke and Schmitte, Italian Glass Murano-Milan, p. 99 for illustrations

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