Le Stanze del Vetro – Page 4 – Fondazione Giorgio Cini

I Santillana Opere di Laura de Santillana e Alessandro Diaz de Santillana

The latest publication from the Le Stanze del Vetro tries out a new narrative style based on dialogue and a comparative approach to the poetics of two artists. I Santillana explores the twofold universe of the siblings, Laura de Santillana and Alessandro Diaz de Santillana, descendants of a legendary glassmaking dynasty, who trained in the tradition of their father, Ludovico Diaz de Santillana, and their grandfather Paolo Venini. Published to accompany the Venice exhibition, the book presents around 100 works, including glass sculptures, artworks and objects made by the two artists from the 1980s to the present day. There is also a section with the new works specifically conceived and made for the Venice exhibition. These works were not produced jointly. The two artists have explored individually the language of glass in a different but intertwined way, reflecting their independent artistic careers, albeit bound by family ties and a shared biographical background. In addition to critical essays by Pasquale Gagliardi (Secretary General of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini), Martin Bethenod (Director of the François Pinault Foundation) and Peter Murray (Director of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park), the book includes Martin Bethenod in conversation with Alessandro Diaz de Santillana and Laura de Santillana, the catalogue of the works, photographs of the exhibition installation, and the biographies of the two artists.

Napoleone Martinuzzi. Venini 1925-1932

This catalogue was published for the second exhibition in a series of shows dedicated to the history of the Venini glassworks, organised by Le Stanze del Vetro (Rooms for Glass), a long-term cultural project launched by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini and Pentagram Stiftung with the aim of studying and showcasing the art of 20th-century Venetian glassmaking. The many cultural activities in the Rooms for Glass project include solo exhibitions illustrating the work of artists who have collaborated with the renowned Murano glassworks. Each show is accompanied by a book, and at the end of the exhibition series the various volumes will go to make up the complete Venini catalogue raisonné. In 1925 Martinuzzi – an artist highly esteemed by Gabriele D’Annunzio – formed a partnership with Paolo Venini and began to collaborate with the celebrated furnace V.S.M. Venini & C. For this company he designed many remarkable objects until 1931. The catalogue reconstructs the entire production designed by the Murano sculptor through a sequence of around 600 works, which were recovered thanks to long, rigorous research work. The study of unpublished material from the Venini historical archive made it possible to describe Martinuzzi’s contribution to artistic life in the glassworks and identify his numerous models, previously partially unknown. After initially designing elegant transparent blown glass, he went on to create works with a new opaque texture, using pulegoso glass (characterised by dense bubbles) and opaque glass with intense solid colours. Martinuzzi thus put together a striking catalogue of artefacts that included vases, cups, and lamps but also unusual decorative items such as pieces of fruit, coloured glass animals and succulent plants, some on a monumental scale. The catalogue includes many fascinating period photographs as well as autograph and furnace designs.

Glass from Finland in the Bischofberger Collection

Over 300 works from the Bischofberger Collection celebrate the fascination and splendour of art glass and document the excellence of Finnish and international design through masterpieces by the leading 20th-century Finnish designers: Aino and Alvar Aalto, Arttu Brummer, Kaj Franck, Göran Hongell, Gunnel Nyman, Timo Sarpaneva, Oiva Toikka and Tapio Wirkkala.

These very rare and often one-o- pieces were passionately and discerningly collected by Christina and Bruno Bischofberger over the last forty years. e unique nature of the objects highlights the original intentions of each artist or designer and makes this collection of glass from Finland one of the most important Worldwide. Published for the Venice exhibition and edited by Kaisa Koivisto, curator of the Finnish Glass Museum of Riihimäki (Finland) and Pekka Korvenmaa, a professor at the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Helsinki, the catalogue presents the greatest achievements of a century of glassmaking: forms and objects that rewrote the history of both Scandinavian and international design. e various historical periods are richly documented and the selected works take the reader on an fascinating elegant itinerary that ranges from crystal pieces with the hues of the early 1930s up to the more colourful and at times “psychedelic” productions of the 1970s in a celebration of timeless designs of the highest standard.

Tomaso Buzzi alla Venini

A lively leading exponent of Milanese “Neoclassicism”, the architect Tomaso Buzzi was a friend and collaborator of Gio Ponti and also a member of the design group called Il Labirinto, together with Ponti himself and Paolo Venini. From 1932 to 1933 Buzzi was involved in a very fruitful collaboration with the Venini glassworks, which also periodically turned to him again for designs in later years. This book reconstructs Buzzi’s whole glass production, previously only barely described since few examples of his work were known. The careful documentary research highlights the context that he worked in and underscores his original creative contribution to both the forms of models and the related significant glassmaking techniques. Buzzi often designed objects inspired by ancient art and invented a kind of opaque glass with several layers of colour, finished in gold leaf. With various colour tones this gave rise to the works called laguna, alba, alga and tramonto. The catalogue surveys over 300 designs, ranging from vases to lamp shades produced by Venini, but also includes designs that Buzzi made for specific commissions and unrealised projects. The architect’s glass works are well-documented in a rich section with period photographs and, importantly, the previously unpublished drawings from the Venini historic archive and other unpublished designs now preserved in the Buzzi Archive at Scarzuola (Montegabbione) –all evidence of his great passion for glass.

The Glass of the Architects. Vienna 1900-1937

The Glass of the Architects. Vienna 1900-1937

Curated by Rainald Franz, The Glass of the Architects. Vienna 1900-1937 is the second exhibition dedicated to international developments in 20th-century glass, after Glass from Finland in the Bischofberger Collection. The exhibitions are part of the “LE STANZE DEL VETRO” project jointly run by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini and Pentagram Stiftung for the purpose of studying and promoting the art of glassmaking in the 20th and 21st centuries.

With over 300 works from the collection of the MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, Vienna, and private collections, the exhibition in LE STANZE DEL VETRO on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore focuses for the first time on the history of glassmaking in Austria from 1900 to 1937, a period spanning the last decades of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the First Republic.

In fact in the early 20th century a group of young architects, designers, and fine arts and architecture students developed a special interest in the process of glassmaking. Many of them were to win fame as leading figures in Viennese Modernism, such as Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956), Koloman Moser (1868-1918), Joseph Maria Olbrich (1867-1908), Leopold Bauer (1872-1938), Otto Prutscher (1880-1949), Oskar Strnad (1879-1935), Oswald Haerdtl (1899-1959) and Adolf Loos (1870-1933). They paved the way to the first pioneering developments in 20th-century glass production as they worked with the furnaces in order to gain a thorough understanding of the material.

The collaboration between architects and designers and the introduction of their innovations to production created the style of Viennese Glass, found in new projects such as the Wiener Werkstätte or the Austrian Werkbund. In the exhibition, the juxtaposition of glass objects and their designs (with photographs documenting their production, design and exhibitions) brings back to life the amazing impressions on visitors that such radically modern objects created at the time.

Fulvio Bianconi at Venini

A graphic artist, illustrator and designer, Fulvio Bianconi (Padua, 1915 – Milan, 1996), from the interwar period onwards, was associated with the glassworks of Paolo Venini with which he established a significant working relationship, one continuing for much of the 1950s and leading to the creation of an extraordinary series of highly coloured Murano glass pieces that encapsulate the enthusiasm of the decade and characterise the taste of the period. In the ’60s and ’80s–’90s, the artist renewed his association with the glassworks, if in an episodic way, designing several other little series. The present volume, the fruit of thoroughgoing research based mostly on unpublished material coming from the Venini historical archives, revisits this exciting experience of Bianconi’s and illustrates the entire production created for the celebrated Murano furnace. This consists of some five hundred models, including vases and bowls with original forms and exuberant but refined polychrome glass weaves (pezzati, scozzesi, a fasce) (patchwork, Scots, with bands etc.). As well as these, there are amusing animals but also a great number (c. 180) of very lively and ironic glass figurines, often freely inspired by characters of the Commedia dell’arte (Italian popular theatre), such as Arlecchino (Harlequin) and Pulcinella, and others by regional or period costumes etc., testimony to the extraordinary creativity of a versatile and prolific artist.

Le Stanze del Vetro Fulvio Bianconi at the Venini

The series of exhibitions on the history of the Venini glassworks continues this autumn. They are organised by Le Stanze del Vetro, a cultural project and exhibition space created jointly by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini and Pentagram Stiftung on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore. Following exhibitions on Carlo Scarpa, Napoleone Martinuzzi and Tomaso Buzzi, the autumn exhibition will be devoted to
Fulvio Bianconi (1915-1996).

A prolific graphic artist and designer, Bianconi began working with Venini after the Second World War, designing models with extravagant forms, characterised by a powerful use of colour. Some of his works capture the enthusiasm of the “fabulous” 1950s and have become an icon of the art of Murano glass for that period.

Curated by Marino Barovier, the exhibition Fulvio Bianconi at the Venini will be accompanied by the first catalogue raisonné of glass designed by Bianconi for the celebrated Murano furnace.

Published by Skira for Le Stanze del Vetro, the catalogue is edited by Marino Barovier with
Carla Sonego.

The Finnish glass

During the exhibition Glass from Finland in the Bischofberger Collection, curated by Kaisa Koivisto and Pekka Korvenmaa (13 April – 2 August 2015) and organised by Le Stanze del Vetro on the Island of San Giorgio, the Institute of Art History’s Glass Study Centre will hold an international conference devoted to Finnish glass and its influence on the international scene.

The conference is intended to be a scholarly complement to the exhibition and will cast light on the development of Finnish design from the early 1930s to the 1970s. Major experts will contribute by exploring various aspects of the subject, including the history of Finnish design and its influence on glass worldwide. In the period in question along with renowned designers, such as the husband and wife Aino and Alvar Aalto, other rising stars of Scandinavian design came to the fore, including Arttu Brummer, Gunnel Nyman and Göran Hongell. This was also the time when significant collaborations were established between Italian companies and Finnish artists, as in the highly successful case of the Venini glassworks with Tapio Wirkkala and Timo Sarpaneva.

THURSDAY 4 JUNE

MORNING – 9.30 am
Welcoming remarks
Luca Massimo Barbero,
Director of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini Institute of Art History

10 am – 1 pm
Pekka Korvenmaa
What was there besides glass?

Kaisa Koivisto
Nature and Finnish glass from the Thirties to the Seventies

Jennifer Opie
Finnish glass in London

Nina Strizler-Levine
Finnish Design in America: discourses, mythologies, realities

AFTERNOON – 3 pm

Jean-Luc Olivié
Paris-Helsinki, one way or round trip?

Timo Keinanen
Fantasy and functionality, the glass of Aino and Alvar Aalto

Maja Heuer
Paradigm shift for Scandinavian glass – experimentation and redefinition of contemporary Finnish glass during the glass industry’s period of transformation

Valerio Terraroli
Impeccable form and taste: Finnish style and Italian design

Vittorio Linfante
Back to the future of design: the continuing dialogue between Italian design and Finnish design

Rosa Barovier Mentasti
Winds from the North

Glass from Finland in the Bischofberger Collection

On 13 April 2015 the exhibition Glass from Finland in the Bischofberger Collection will open on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore. The exhibition is curated jointly by Kaisa Koivisto, chief curator at the Finnish Glass Museum in Riihimäki, Finland, and Pekka Korvenmaa, a professor at the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Finland. This significant single loan of over 300 works of glass art from the Bischofberger Collection is highly representative of the excellence of Finnish and international design. The exhibition will enable a wider public to experience the fascination and brilliance of glass art as they explore masterpieces by leading 20th-century Finnish designers: Aino and Alvar Aalto, Arttu Brummer, Kaj Franck, Göran Hongell, Gunnel Nyman, Timo Sarpaneva, Oiva Toikka and Tapio Wirkkala.

The exhibition offers a unique opportunity to see for the first time some very rare objects, often one-off pieces, which Bruno and Christina Bischofberger have passionately and discerningly collected over the last forty years. The unique nature of these objects highlights the original intentions of each artist or designer and makes this collection of Finnish glass one of the most important worldwide. Abundantly documenting the various historical periods, the works selected for the exhibition Glass from Finland in the Bischofberger Collection are laid out in an elegant itinerary that ranges from crystal items with the typical hues of the early 1930s up to the more colourful, at times even “psychedelic”, creations of the 1970s. The works by the sculptor and designer Tapio Wirkkala are particularly worth watching out for, and especially his series Ultima Thule: the glasses, jugs and vases are like blocks of ice, with “dripping” surfaces, creating an interplay of transparencies and reflections verging on the abstract. The bottle created for Finlandia Vodka, still in production, is one of the most accomplished and famous items in the collection. The fascinating, rich survey curated by Kaisa Koivisto and Pekka Korvenmaa for Le Stanze del Vetro on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore presents the finest results from a century of glass production, enabling visitors to explore all the nuances and variations in a celebration of timeless designs of the very highest standard.

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Free Educational Activities at LE STANZE DEL VETRO

Sundays in May LE STANZE DEL VETRO will host free activities and workshops for families and children inspired by the Finnish glasses in the Bischofberger Collection and by the external pavilion “Glass Tea House Mondrian” by the Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto.

The most important family friendly events will take place from Saturday May 30 to Monday June 1, on the occasion of the Global Day of Parents, as a part of the national initiative “Kidpassdays: let’s discover the city together!”

SUNglassDAY. Family Sundays to discover art glass

Sunday, May 10, 24 at 4pm; Sunday, May 31 at 11am and 4pm: guided tours for adults and kids to the exhibition “Glass from Finland in the Bischofberger Collection” with workshops for children (ages 5 – 10).

Trotting to the teahouse!

Sunday, May 17 at 11am and 4pm; Saturday, May 30 at 4pm: Japanese fairy tales and stories by Sabina Italiano with musical arrangement by Marco Centasso (contrabass)

Monday, June 1 at 11 am and 4pm: creative workshop drawing inspiration from Kaiawase, the ancient Japanese shell game (in collaboration with the Oriental Art Museum of Venice).

All activities, organized and run by Artsystem, require prior booking to be made no later than the Wednesday before by calling the free number 800 662 477 (Monday to Friday, from 10 am to 5 pm) or by sending an email to artsystem@artsystem.it. Limited availability.

Fulvio Bianconi: artist and glass designer

Ahead of the exhibition “Fulvio Bianconi at Venini”, the Glass Study Centre of the Institute of Art History at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini,in collaboration with Le Stanze del Vetro, is staging an international conference on the island of San Giorgio to explore the work of this multifaceted artist. The aim is to provide the public with a portrait of an outstanding personality in terms of his highly varied interests and skills.

Fulvio Bianconi (Padua, 1915 – Milan, 1996) was at the same time a graphic designer, an illustrator and an industrial designer with a strong artistic background. His first contact with Murano glass was as an apprentice decorator under the guidance of Michele Pinto in the 1930s, while he was also working as a caricaturist in Milan. There he was noticed by Dino Villani, who introduced him to some of the leading publishing houses of the day. He thus began a series of collaborations as a freelance graphic artist and illustrator with publishers such as Garzanti, Mondadori, Bompiani, Rizzoli and Motta; he was also commissioned to paint a series of frescoes for the Galtrucco shops and for the pavilions at the Milan trade fair. Having joined Garzanti on a permanent basis, he remained with them until 1975. During that period he also worked for GiViEmme, FIAT, Marzotto, HMV, Pathe, Columbia, Pirelli and RAI.

In 1946, following a commission to design perfume bottles for GiViEmme in Murano, he met Paolo Venini, who introduced him to the extraordinary world of glass. Venini sensed Bianconi’s great creative potential and invited him to work in his Venetian glassworks. Their collaboration, which lasted until the mid-1950s, produced, for example, the twelve Figures from Commedia dell’Arte (shown at the 24th Venice Biennale in 1948), the Tiepolo Figures, the Mermaids, and the Pezzato and Fazzoletto vases – the latter went on to become a symbol of post-war Venice. His production conveys the lively and fertile ideas of those years and contributed to the success of Venetian glass on the international scene.

A great interpreter of the minimalist taste of the 1960s, he occasionally collaborated with leading furnaces and art galleries that were active in the glass sector, such as Gino Cenedese & C. in the 1950s, the Danese Gallery in Milan (with glass made by I.V.R. Mazzega) in 1958. In 1963 he designed for the Vistosi glassworks, and was awarded a prize at the Milan Triennial for a cylindrical vase with spiral-shaped bands. He then worked for Venini again, designing a series of Vasi Informali (c. 1967), in which he returned to one of his favourite themes – the female figure. Later on he collaborated with various other glassworks: Vetreria Ferro Galliano (1966) Seguso Vetri d’Arte (1978), Toso Vetri d’Arte (1983) and the Vetreria de Majo (1991-1992).

Fulvio Bianconi can definitely be considered as one of the most influential designers of Murano glass in the 20th century. An untiring experimenter, he constantly explored new and ancient glass-making techniques in his research and eclectic production.