The exhibition, The Italian ceramic sculpture after the Second World War. Arturo Martini’s heritage, faces a dialogue among generations with an international general survey, together with a reflection about ceramics. A material that is part of the several artistic languages of the 20th century an that involves foreign artists who influenced the national artistic production.
The exposition starts from works by Asger Jorn, Albert Diato, Lucio Fontana, Fausto Melotti, leoncillo Leonardi, Nanni Valentini, to explore the most contemporary Luigi Ontani, Mimmo Paladino, Bertozzi & Casoni, and others.
The movements examined are Neo-cubism, Informal, Minimalism, Conceptual and Figurative Arts; they offer a new gaze on and excellent art context focusing the fundamental role of Italy. The goal is recalling the main steps of ceramic sculpture through the protagonists who changed its vision, thanks to the innovative and extraordinary contents.
For the first time the great protagonists of the change of ceramic sculpture are exhibited all together and the critical path, concerning the aesthetic innovation and the new languages, is documented in a distinguished catalogue.
Contemporary ceramic art is now a privileged mean of expression and, today more than ever, is a point of reference for a great part of the young artistic production.
Claudia Casali, MIC Director declares: “the exhibition devoted to Arturo Martini, opened in Autumn 2013 at the MIC Faenza and in Palazzo Fava, Bologna, was a source of inspiration about the historical-artistic evolution of ceramic art after the Second World War. Mainly in the last years if his intense creativity, the artist from Treviso offered causes for reflection accepted both by his pupils and by the later generation. Works of art linked to informal art, Neo-cubism, abstract sculpture, were faced, also from a theoretical point of view, in Martini’s last famous pamphlet Scultura lingua morta (sculpture, a dead language), published in 1945”.
The exhibition is arranged thanks to the fundamental support of Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ravenna, and coordinated by an exceptional Scientific Committee: Maria Vittoria Marini Clarelli, Superintendent Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome; Luigi Ficacci, Superintendent PSAE Bologna; Cecilia Chilosi, expert of ceramic art from Liguria; Flaminio Gualdoni, critic and art historian, teacher at Brera Academy of Fine Arts; Nico Stringa, art historian, teacher at Università Cà Foscari in Venice, Claudia Casali, Director of MIC in Faenza.