At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art On view through March 2
Scarpa and Paolo Venini created a new series, murrine romane, as seen in this truncated cone-shaped glass vase, circa 1936, that took its inspiration from ancient murrines in Venini’s personal collection.
Carlo Scarpa And Venini BY ANDREA VALLUZZO NEW YORK CITY:
T he marriage was fairly brief, spanning just 15 years,
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but it revolutionized glassmaking and produced works of such virtuoso that color, design and form were elevated to new levels. “Venetian Glass by Carlo Scarpa: the Venini Company, 1932–1947,” on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through March 2, tells the story of the close and fertile collaboration between the young Carlo Scarpa (1906–1978) and Venini. Blessed with talent and the hubris of youth, Scarpa began designing glass for Paolo Venini in 1932, while still in his mid-20s. Among the many standouts in the exhibition is this green ovoid sommerso vase in an iridescent green with gold-leaf inclusions. Scarpa personally developed this technique. Lent by the Greenberg Foundation, courtesy of the Corning Museum of Glass.
Carlo Scarpa, at right, is shown with glassmaker Arturo Biasutto in the Venini factory in Murano in 1943. Archivio Storico Luce.
“As soon as he’s mastere d one techniq ue, he moves on,” said exhibiti on curator Nichola s Cullina n, lauding Scarpa’s “restless innovati on..”
Working closely with master glassblowers at Venini and Paolo himself — who reportedly was so enamored with Scarpa’s work, he never refused a single design, even if it was too expensive to mass-produce — Scarpa created more than two dozen styles, breaking new ground in terms of techniques and colors that were noted as highly innovative. “As soon as he’s mastered one technique, he moves on,” said exhibition curator Nicholas Cullinan, lauding Scarpa’s “restless innovation.” Organized chronologically, the exhibition, the museum’s first survey of Twentieth Century Murano glass, takes the viewer through Scarpa’s works, starting with several fine pieces of bollicine glass. So named for the tiny bubbles ensconced throughout the glass, bollicine has a filmy look more reminiscent of crystal than glass.
These rigati e tessuti glass vases and bowl, circa 1938–40, can be thought of as Scarpa’s original interpretation of filigree glass (rod) and works comprising multicolored glass rods. Rigati rods were hot-joined and shaped, while tessuti works were blown. Private collection, Chiara and Francesco Carraro Collection, Venice and a European collection.
A thick, smoke-gray perfume bottle is a fine example of iridati glass, made up of overlaid clear glass layers of different colors with hot applied bugne and iridized surface, circa 1940, Private collection.
In bollicine and in other series, Scarpa pays homage to East Asian aesthetics, especially with his jade green hued-examples, a staple of Oriental art, but he makes the technique his own, transcending the past to create something wholly new and unique. Within a year, he is refining these works and adding new colors like indigo and amethyst. “Already he’s made the technique his own,” Cullinan says. By 1934, he is pioneering his sommerso series, which was first shown at the 19th and 20th Venice Biennale (1934–36.
Previous pages: A variation of bollicine glass is this green pulegoso glass vase with side grips, disc foot and iridized surface that dates to 1932. Chiara and Francesco Carraro Collection, Venice. A square bottle with sections of black-coral and coral-black with red lattimo murrine elements arranged in diagonal rows and alternating colors dates to around 1936–40. Private collection.
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carpa never sticks to one technique for too long or reinvents a past technique in later years to give it a new twist. As the exhibition moves forward, one can see Scarpa constantly strive to create new things. “He’s really trying to push the medium to its limits,” Cullinan said. He moves easily from the delicate mezza filigrana, 1934–36, with its extremely thin and clear texture, to the etched corrosi (corroded) series, with its rugged patina, circa 1936–38. Scarpa has so mastered glass that he can even make glass not look like glass.
Designed to appear as inimitable artifacts with wheelground geometric, abstract or figural decoration, the incisi series is exemplified in the exhibition with a truncated cone-shaped glass vase with velato finish and incise decoration, along with a glass vase with jagged rim, velato finish and deep incise decoration. Both pieces are circa 1940–42 and from a private collection.
Howard Lockwood, Twentieth Century glass expert and a collector of Scarpa glass, recently gave a talk to the Metropolitan New York Glass Club on Scarpa’s work. “Carlo Scarpa’s work was so innovative at the time for several reasons.“The exuberance of youth with the aid of maestros who could execute his ideas led to great, new innovative work. When Scarpa brought his ideas to Paolo Venini [after Cappellin went bankrupt] he found another great receptor for his ideas.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art is at 1000 Fifth Avenue. For information, 212-650-2010 or www.metmuseum.org.
A clear, mole-gray glass bowl has central abstract macchie decoration in blue and black glass, iridized. The circa 1942 piece is from the Chiara and Francesco Carraro Collection, Venice.
These two examples of a pennellate are among Scarpa’s later works at Venini and made of clear glass applied with irregular brush stroke decoration in amethyst and sulfuryellow glass.