Faenza

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Ceramic Art Galleries at the Museum

Until November 4, 2010
Faenza – Italy

Italian Ceramics - Lovers by Leoncillo Leonardi - glazed terracotta - 1954 - Photo credits: www.dorotheum.comThe International Museum of Ceramics (MIC) in Faenza is hosting an original art event. Eight Art Galleries have been invited to display their collections of modern ceramic works in the new 20th century building.

The list of the artists is impressive: James Brown, Walter Cascio, Giacinto Cerone, Giosetta Fioroni, Mirella Guasti, Luca Lanzi, Leoncillo, Luigi Mainolfi, Renato Meneghetti, Aldo Mondino, Antonello Santè P., Germano Sartelli, Nanni Valentini, Antonio Violetta, Sergio Zanni.

Some of the artists are already represented in the permanent collections of the Museum, while others are featured for the first time.

MIC is the largest and most representative museum of Ceramics in Italy. Its mission is to establish Ceramics as a primary form of Art and one of its key strategies is an active support for contemporary International and Italian Ceramic Art, especially since the expansion of the original buildings.  Continue reading →

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Meeting Italian ceramic artists: Mirta Morigi

Italian Ceramics - Works by Mirta Morigi - Photo credits: www.racine.ra.itWhen I stepped through the old door into Mirta’s bottega it felt like I was traveling back in time, when technology did not own our lives and working meant “laboring”.
Biscotto piled up on every shelf, sketches pinned all around, brushes, easels, pieces at different production stages, busy people sitting at small desks, the perennial grayish dust of clay everywhere. Nobody seemed to pay any attention to me, and I was really wondering if I had misinterpreted the indications I’d found on Mirta’s showroom window in the main street of Faenza.

Then a nice girl looked up from her half-painted plate and asked me if I was looking for Mirta. A hesitant “yes, I am,” and I was told, “She’s in the back room”. Impossible not to feel at home! Continue reading →

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Guerrino Tramonti – Ceramics in Urbino, 1930-1970

September 2-30, 2010
Urbino – Italy

Italian Ceramics - Plate by artist Guerrino Tramonti (1974) - Photo credits: www.tramontiguerrino.itCelebrated as one of the most important Italian artist of the 20th century, Guerrino Tramonti was a a ceramicists, a sculptor and a painter.

This retrospective exhibition displays more than 60 ceramics made between 1930 and 1970, the highest peak of Tramonti’s artistic production.

The terracotta sculptures, ceramics, and stoneware on display in Urbino show the strong personality of a man who always interpreted his time with a powerful, Mediterranean modernity. He won his first prize at sixteen and since then he never stopped exploring new trends and new techniques, with enthusiasm and talent.

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Italian ceramic artists at the European Ceramic Context 2010

Sept. 11 – Nov. 7, 2010
Bornholm, Denmark

Italian Ceramics - Artwork by artist Martha Eugenia Pachon - Photo credits: flickr.comMartha Eugenia Pachon, Mirco Denicolò and Alessandro Neretti will represent Italian art ceramic at the European Ceramic Context 2010 held at the Bornholm Art Museum in Bornholm, Denmark.

The event includes two wide-ranging exhibitions, one for the Established Artists, titled Ceramic Art, and one for the New Talent, presenting the work of 110 artists from 30 European countries.
A selection committee of 4 members will make the final selection and assign the prizes.

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Ceramics – History of Women

Italian Pottery - Ceramic works by Susanna Vassura - Photo credits: www.faenzanotizie.it

Until September 5, 2010
Faenza –Italy

A small exhibition, with little advertising, if any. It’s held in a city where the evolution of pottery has taken the direction of Art, leaving to other Italian towns the role of keeping traditional artistic ceramics alive. It’s featured in a Museum which has not been championing women so far.

All the artists presenting their works are women making their pottery in Faenza. Today.

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Argillà – Faenza Pottery Festival

Sept. 4- 5, 2010
Faenza – Italy

Faenza International pottery festival

Launched only two years ago, Argillà has already become the largest International pottery festival in Italy. In a few weekends almost 200 selected ceramicists from Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Nederland, Austria, Slovenia and Croatia and other European countries will display their works in the historical district in Faenza.

A great chance for anyone to discover the world of pottery and pottery makers, to learn more about ceramics or just to have fun.

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White Italian Majolica – Faenza and Rome

Until August 22, 2010
Faenza – Italy

Sept. 16 – Nov. 28
Rome – Italy

The exhibition celebrates “the whites”, Italian ceramics - Plate with Tedoforo, Ceramics Museum of San Nicola Basilica in Tolentino - Photo credits: www.micfaenza.orga specific style of pottery that arose in Faenza in the 1540s.

Their innovative shapes, designs and glazes determined their immediate success; within a few years from their appearance on the market, they were already so popular that many potters started to make them, both in Italy and in other European countries.

Known as the “pottery from Faenza”  or faentini, the whites became so famous that French people shortened their name to “faience”, that is now the French name for Majolica or Pottery.

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Cantagalli, the Scottish dimension

by Sheila Forbes

On 31 August 1880 Margaret Tod and Ulisse Cantagalli were married in the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Mary’s, Edinburgh, with Ulisse’s brother Romeo, and Margaret’s brother Robert, as witnesses. His Grace, John Menzies Strain, Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, officiated, thereby establishing a permanent bond between the two fine cities of Edinburgh and Florence (SCA).

The Tods of Edinburgh
Margaret’s father was Robert Tod, Mill owner, a partner in Alexander & Robert Tod Ltd., Leith Flour Mills (NAS D76/1056), and a Leith Harbour and Dock Commissioner (NAS SC70/4/298).

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Novecento – Italian Ceramics. Volume 3: last decades

Italian Ceramics - Emanuela Gaudenzi book coverThe title of this book – 1900. Key artists and works of the 20th century. Vol.3: last decades –  says all we needed to spring to our feet and rush to the nearest bookshop, longing to own it.

Mind you: this is not an objective book review. How can it be? We LOVE books AND we have a PASSION for Italian pottery. And this is an excellent, though opinionated (impossible to do differently!), collection of the most interesting works made between the Eighties and the end of the century, thus offering a good perspective on the status of the art and a concise interpretation of its development.

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We went to Della Robbia exhibition!


Tiziana getting in the right mood for the exhibtion...

We made it. It’s always complicated to get organized with husbands and children to go to art events. They are not in the least interested but … Manuela and I have a secret weapon: GOOD FOOD!

We discovered a couple of years ago a nice wine bar in Arezzo, with excellent food, home made local dishes with fresh ingredient from the area. You know, ribollita, white beans, finocchiona, pecorino … Suddenly no one had any objection to a Sunday off and we met in Arezzo, under a cloudy sky, excited to see so many Della Robbia works in a single place. Continue reading →