Fausto Melotti

About the Item

Curator: Antonella Commellato; Marta Melotti Pages: 476, Color illustrations: 1015 The catalog raisonné of the ceramics of Fausto Melotti, the absolute protagonist of Italian art, whose ceramic production is fully inscribed within his artistic itinerary, developing from the second post-war period up to the very early 1960s; and even if Melotti sometimes feels "forced" to face this terrain, for reasons of survival, in reality he finds in it a further tool for inventing new forms and for "transforming" the very concept of sculpture. Born in Rovereto, Fausto Melotti was one of the personalities who brought prestige to his hometown. Since the mid-1930s, in the Italy of the return to the figurative order, he set up his abstract and almost two-dimensional sculptures, built on a bold and absolutely innovative language for the time. From that moment, the vein of experimenter never left him and, associated with an instinctive tension towards musical harmony, guided him in the creation of a work now recognized, in Italy and abroad, as one of the most significant of our Artistic twentieth century. Along with Fontana, Burri or Vedova, Fausto Melotti is an absolute protagonist of Italian art to which many exponents of subsequent artistic generations have looked. The long parenthesis of ceramic production is inserted between the abstract and purist geometry of the Thirties and the light filaments of the Sixties and Eighties, which reject "the stupid love of matter". In ceramics, this multifaceted artist therefore finds a material that can be manipulated, like the plaster of his early days or terracotta. The idea of malleability of the material acts as a counterpoint to the expressive choice of "high" sculpture, linked to metals, and if in this Melotti cancels the full-relief and the drapery, in the ceramics he often re-proposes a "baroque breeze": "the artist – wrote Melotti – he must have a creed but, I think, he 'must' also betray it”. Thus Melotti in his creations pushes himself to the extreme limits allowed by the material, trying to make ever thinner sheets or to reach the maximum dimensions allowed by the ovens; even making the functional use of the object “impossible”: coffee cups too tall and narrow for teaspoons, bells too fragile to be rung, pitchers with elusive handles, unimaginable vases for holding flowers. This monumental catalog raisonné brings together over 1500 ceramic works - sculptural works and objects of decorative use - divided into different types: the theatres; the figurative sculptures; large animals; the female figures; the korai; the sacred sculptures; the bas-reliefs; the plates; the vases; the cups; the husks; bestiary; the circles; dishes; lamps; stoups, angels, UN; bells, frames, necklaces; tea and coffee sets; cups; ashtray. The volume contains an extensive introductory essay by Massimo Carboni, professor of Aesthetics at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, who - to underline the innovative and experimental personality of the sculptor from Trentino, in the Italian art scene of the twentieth century - deals with the work of Melotti especially from a theoretical and philosophical point of view. The reasoned filing work is instead entrusted to Antonella Commellato who, proceeding by typology, dedicates an in-depth introductory essay of a historical-artistic nature to each cycle of works. The illustrated biography, bibliography and list of exhibitions close the volume.

Dimensions:

Height: 11.03 in (28 cm)Width: 9.45 in (24 cm)Depth: 1.58 in (4 cm)

Materials and Techniques:

Paper

Period:

Mid-20th Century

Date of Manufacture:

2003

Condition:

In very good condition, it is used, but almost like new.

Seller Location:

Montelabbate, IT