Lot 87

DINO MARTENS (1894-1970) The Venetian painter and designer Corrado Martens, adoringly known as "Dino," was indisputably a leading figure in the development and modernization of 20th century Italian glass. Born in 1894, Martens trained as an artist at the Academia de Belle Arti and devoted his early career to his painting. By 1911 he began exhibiting his works at the Società Umanitaria in Milan and soon thereafter, between 1911 and 1930, his "Novecento" style paintings were presented at the Biennale di Venezia. Frustrated, however, by financial disappointments, Martens turned his creative energies to the design of glassware. Early associations were with the S.A.L.I.R. and Salviati workshops. By 1939 he was appointed artistic director of Aureliano Toso glassworks, and it was there that he nurtured and perfected his artistic forms of expression. Embracing biomorphism and enriching objects with a painterly 20th century palette, Martens created a large and varied body of work. Drawing on a Muranese legacy of traditional glass blowing, he rediscovered the essential qualities of ancient techniques and revolutionized them. His experiments with ground glass resulted in some of the most exquisite and sophisticated works of art glass produced in the 20th century. While some designs are brilliantly colored and intricately patterned, others are noted for their tactile surface finishes or elegant simplicity. Perhaps best known for the zanfirico (glass canes decorated either internally or externally with twisted thin glass threads) and oriente (the inclusion of glass fragments, irregular multi-colored patches, glittering copper crystals and pinwheel murrines) techniques, Martens experimented constantly. Working closely with his master blowers, his works represent the peak of technical and aesthetic achievement. Not only were his wares exhibited at countless Biennali in Venice and Triennali in Milan, but in 1959 his work was included in "Glass 1959, A Special Exhibition of International Glass" organized by the Corning Museum of Glass (Corning, New York), where his magnificent zanfirico vase was recognized by a selection committee (including the likes of Leslie Cheek, Edgar Kaufmann, Russell Lynes, George Nakashima, and Gio Ponti) as one of the fifteen most important objects in a field of eighteen-hundred works representing 173 manufacturers from twenty-three countries. As Russell Lynes noted, "...it combines the traditional gaiety of Venetian glass with a feeling that is entirely of the Twentieth century. It is pretty...; it has humor, and it knows who its father (and great-great grandfather is)...it has delight and it has flavor. It uses the Venetian traditions of delight and flavor with a nod to the past but with its heart in the present. It could only have been made today."

'TARABUSO', A 'MEZZA-FILIGRANA BIANCA-NERA' GLASS PITCHER

DINO MARTINS FOR AURELIANO TOSO, CIRCA 1950

Details

'TARABUSO', A 'MEZZA-FILIGRANA BIANCA-NERA' GLASS PITCHER
Dino Martins for Aureliano Toso, Circa 1950
model no. 5951
10¼in. (26cm.) high

Lot Essay

cf. Marc Heiremans, 20th Century Murano Glass/From Craft to Design, 1996, plate 153, p.123 for an illustration of the same technique in a different form; Marc Heiremans, Dino Martens, 1999, p. 86 for an illustration of the model

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