Le opere

text of 1951 we read: «I must confess that, looking back, I felt, before his power, as a ceramicist myself, yet more enamoured of this art that has kept me occupied since I was a boy»51. Picasso, for his part, would perhaps never have fully subscribed to the Italo-Argentinian artist’s earlier, famous declaration of intent («I am a sculptor, not a ceramicist»): in other words, he would certainly have made vases and plates, those practical items that have always been made from ceramic, making use of the Vallauris manufactory [Fig. 45]. Whereas Fontana fought strenuously almost to deprive this medium of its traditional function, Picasso would have glorified it in a different way, without ever negating it. This was a central issue for anyone working in ceramics. For example, Melotti took yet another position: in an interview of 1984 later published in 1992 by Antonia Mulas, he claimed, implicitly, to have embraced ceramics precisely to exploit its ornamental and functional potential, in other words by producing vases, plates, and other objects of small size on a large scale:

«Since I wasn’t able to make a living from sculpture and I didn’t like going into debt [...] I began to make ceramics. I invented a sort of ceramics that was very popular and that provided me with money, allowing me to live comfortably [...] Later, at a certain point, people realized that I wasn’t bad as a sculptor either and I gave up ceramics [...] a poet can write wonderful advertisements but at heart is ashamed to do that alone, and so I was ashamed. But when I saw Picasso’s ceramics, I thought there was no need for me to be ashamed, because mine were no uglier than his!»52 .

It is no coincidence that Melotti compared his own ceramics with those of Picasso [Fig. 46]: these were pieces that in some ways belonged to the same genre, whereas those by Fontana were truly something different. Melotti, who from the end of the 1920s had developed a close and lasting friendship with Fontana, whose first teacher, Wildt, he shared, had begun to work systematically in ceramic in the mid-1940s. At the start of this experience we find a series of small sculptures, some of which are not so different from the famous terracotta Little Theatres; here we should mention one in particular, the Letter to Fontana of 1944 [Fig. 48], in which the artist almost paid a tribute of gratitude to the friend who had been the first to start working in this medium (it is worth remembering that the careers of the two artists in many ways ran roughly parallel: again in 1935, and again at Il Milione, Melotti too had displayed his first abstract sculptures). Dating to the same year, 1944, is the Story of Harlequin [Fig. 47], and in both these ceramics I seem to sense an affinity with the surrealist paintings of Alberto Savinio (an affinity that can also be seen with some youthful sculptures by Leoncillo). Indeed, if we interpret the Baroque more broadly, as the critics of the time sometimes did, in other words as a principle antithetical to classicism, it is easy to understand how the surrealist style could be brought back to this common denominator, and in

51 Fontana 1951, p. 24. 52 mulas 1992, pp. 30-31. this sense I think that the painting of Max Ernst, who had displayed at Il Milione in 1931, may also have influenced the Melotti of the Story of Harlequin. The ceramics of the following years were completely different: vases, plates, cups and also those cartocci that were always and above all practical objects, which met with that significant commercial success recalled many years later by the artist who, as we have seen, attempted to distance himself from an activity that he claims to have undertaken for purely economic reasons. Already in 1974, in an interview given to Harper’s Bazar, he had stated «I am not particularly fond of ceramics»53. Unlike Fontana, then, Melotti saw a profound difference between the work of a sculptor and that of a ceramicist: whilst the former, in stating that he was a sculptor and not a ceramicist, claimed for this material a status equivalent to that of marble or bronze, the latter never made this leap in part because, as we have said, he had accepted what we might describe as the traditional role of ceramics. This point remains valid even taking into consideration the fact that Fontana himself made plates and decorative objects, in particular from the 1950s onwards, about which Garibaldo Marussi expressed some reservations; reviewing an exhibition by the artist in 1950 (Milan, Il Milione) he wrote: «The works that Fontana presents today are almost all plates, large plates to be hung on the wall to enliven the atmosphere of a room [...] they are overloaded, sometimes overly mellow [...] overabundance [...] turgidity [...] tumefaction [...] are the danger that Fontana runs today»54 . It is natural to conclude, in the light of what we have said so far, that Marussi found this Fontana to be a little too Baroque. As concerns this critical issue (ceramics as sculpture versus ceramics as plates and vases) Leoncillo’s position was essentially identical to that of Fontana. Already in 1947, Gio Ponti, in an article published in a Swiss magazine (in German, English and French), devoted mainly to the fine Caryatids for a balustrade of about 1945, wrote:

«Now, face to face with his powerful work we see how true this is. And we see that what might separate sculpture from ceramic and relegate the latter to the level of learned infancy and the standard of a vain decorative toy, has been left far behind»55 .

Leoncillo’s axiom, to which Gio Ponti referred here, was quoted again by the same author in the aforementioned article of 1948 on the visit to Picasso at Vallauris: «Sculpture without colour is not sculpture, it is architecture»56. The great master of Italian design was responsible for launching Leoncillo on the international stage in 1940 by inviting him to the Milan Triennale, where he won the gold medal for the applied arts. The sculptor from Spoleto had made his debut in 1939 as a ceramicist, and in this same year had modelled the busts representing The Four

53 CaRBoni 2003, p. 12. 54 panCotto 1991, pp. 22-25. 55 ponti 1947, p. 217. 56 ponti 1948a p. 25.

Seasons (Rome, Palazzo Merulana, Cerasi collection), in which the iconographical theme, too, alluded to distant 17th-century precedents, certainly viewed through the lens of 19th-century sculpture, starting from the aforementioned Carpeaux [Figs 49-50]: indeed, Longhi, in that «tiresome Baroque breeze that lasts from Bernini to Rosso» tellingly included the name of the Frenchman57 . Leoncillo, unlike Melotti, never repudiated this work, to which he remained faithful throughout his career: Leoncillo never worked in either marble or bronze and, very unlike Fontana, he did not follow a path that led from sculpture to painting (not to mention Spatialism); he is a proud sculptor in ceramics. Nonetheless, Leoncillo, just like Fontana, and above all like Melotti, made practical objects; indeed, he did not stop at plates and vases, but created astonishing coffee services (like Melotti), almost as if to underline the unique nature of these pieces, generally considered to be serially produced objects of little value. But ultimately this is a minor part of Leoncillo’s oeuvre, and so for him the discussion must remain very different to that proposed for Melotti. Obviously, it goes without saying that the latter’s aforementioned vases and cartocci are also now obstinately (and rightly) catalogued singly in the monographs, as unique pieces (as they are), almost as if to contradict the statements of the artist, who did not wish to see himself in this production, viewed as more commercial than his abstract sculptures. Now, as concerns Leoncillo, it was above all Longhi who associated him with the concept of Baroque, and the writings of the great scholar were subsequently repeated without any significant corrections. For Longhi, Leoncillo was not Baroque for his open forms, or for the “Spatialist” potential of his terracottas, which are rarely monumental, but rather for his opposition both to the art of the Fascist regime, and thus to the Novecento movement, and for his flashes of colour, in other words the fact that his sculpture was always painted sculpture. It is obvious that Leoncillo might identify with such a reading. With Leoncillo, though, we must return to the issue of Picasso, but this time in a completely different vein. From the second half of the 1940s, Leoncillo’s ceramics betray the strong influence of Cubist language, in itself not easily associated with the category of Baroque. The sculptor never denied this rapport, almost rejecting Longhi’s interpretation, which tended to downplay it, at least in 1954, the year in which he published his brief but rich monographic essay on the artist: «Already in the group, or should we say the outline of the Miners, there is less trace of the distinction between the syntax derived from Cubism and the recognizability necessary for the humble subject. Leoncillo insists on saying that Picasso’s famous Musicians still peep out of them; but I am unable to recall them when faced with the new humility of human endeavour […]»; again, with reference to the Night Bombing of 1954 (Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna), Longhi glossed: «also known as the Guernichetta or Little Guernica for its allusions, albeit purely thematic, to Picasso’s famous painting»58. Among other things, it is worth noting that ten years after the Roman Mother, Leoncillo continued to tackle subjects linked to the theme of war as seen

57 longhi 1914 [1961], p. 133. 58 longhi 1954 [1984], pp. 72, 74. through the eyes of its innocent victims (Longhi himself spoke of a «complete pity that can take on and drag with it its agony of space, of existence and of catastrophe»): Leoncillo’s moral and ethical engagement was still very much alive. If we consider the artist’s entire oeuvre, including that belonging to his informal period, in itself lacking an explicit narrative content, this atmosphere remains constant; possible exceptions are his creations of the very early 1940s, in particular the Trophies [Figs 54-55], on display here next to their models, felicitous re-readings of the Baroque panoplies (in turn alluding to those of imperial Rome) for which Leoncillo seems to have revived motifs from the imaginary of Gio Ponti, perhaps in part through the lens of the surrealist Savinio [Figs 51-53]. Longhi, in 1954, had before his eyes an important span of Leoncillo’s production, from his more expressionist debuts linked to the Roman School of Scipione and Mafai, but also the civically engaged painting of Renato Guttuso, up to the Cubist turn that, pace Longhi, had had a profound impact on the master’s art. Guttuso himself penned an instant review of that text of 1954, debating the concept of realism in the works of Leoncillo in a long-distance dialogue with Longhi59. Recently, attempts have been made to decipher the meaning of the Roman painter, who had dared to «nitpick over Longhi, who in his view continued to mistake the populism of the 17th-century paintings of beggars for realism»60, but in fact it is difficult to read this implication into Longhi’s text, nor does this seem to have been Guttuso’s interpretation of it. The formula «mournful Barocchetto from Spoleto» encapsulated several critical intuitions: the aversion to a triumphalist style and the artist’s choice of an out of the way location, between Umbertide and Spoleto, alongside the rejection of abstract intellectual formulas. But Leoncillo’s later sculpture, that which is now most popular, in other words his informal phase, was also subtly or implicitly Baroque. For this reason, I find a passage by Massimo Carboni on Melotti particularly apt: «[...] that imperious presence that could be described as lying between the Baroque and the material informal associated with colour»61. Though Leoncillo, who had trained in Rome and settled in Umbria, occupies a position that differs from the Milanese duo Fontana-Melotti, the links between these three artists were evidently close. This is confirmed by the aforementioned ties to Gio Ponti of both Leoncillo and Fontana, and later the simultaneous presence of Leoncillo and Fontana, with two genuine solo exhibitions, at the Biennale of 195462. Leoncillo’s uninterrupted work as a sculptor-ceramicist profoundly distinguishes the Spoletine artist from his colleagues, who at different points abandoned the technique; Fontana, as we know, did so to pursue his own highly personal and complex path that, though disconcerting at a superficial glance, now reveals itself to be unusually coherent in the context of the Italian 20th century. Melotti, for his part, explained another one of the reasons that had always made his relationship with ceramics a conflictual one:

59 guttuso 2013, pp. 380-384. 60 del puppo 2019, pp. 126-127. 61 CaRBone 2003, p. 12. 62 del puppo 2019, pp. 119-126.

«For me, ceramic is a mess. It is an amphibious thing and beneath it all there is always some small deception, because you can never know exactly what you are doing. There is a supreme controller, heat, which builds up behind you and ends up directing operations. Whatever you do, he puts a comma in there at the end, and this will always be annoying to an artist. At least, it annoys me if there’s someone putting commas in what I say or write»63 .

Hoping that Melotti will not take it the wrong way, we will also try to put some commas in what he had said in this interview of 1974. Fontana is better known internationally today above all for the now iconic Cuts and Holes; Melotti wished to be remembered as an abstract sculptor: both, at different times and in different ways, were moving towards a less material, more conceptual style. The fundamental recent monographic exhibition that the Metropolitan Museum in New York devoted to Fontana in 2019 did justice to his entire career, thus including his work as a sculptor in ceramic. If Melotti insisted on downplaying, paradoxically, enchanting masterpieces such as the female figures on display here, it was in part because these, enlivened by a capricious imagination, must have seemed to him all the further from that geometrical rigour that was the other face of his artistic personality, developed in abstract sculpture. And he ascribed to heat the responsibility for an unhindered flight (Baroque?) antithetical to that serious nature that he considered an intrinsic part of his research as an early abstract artist, loftier and more serious (classical?). That same eternal dichotomy, again and always that of Wölfflin, between the Baroque and the classical, can also easily be read, between the lines, in another key passage of that text by Longhi that we have mentioned several times:

«try to ask those others [contemporary Italian sculptors] what we are dealing with; and we will get the most pretentious nonsense: to attain the pebble – pure volumes – sense of the block – cube – sphere – egg – sprout – gland – monument. It is telling that the responses, regardless of the differing terminological tone, come back almost identical from the most varied academies: the attention-seeking Brancusi or Moore, the luxury abstractionist, will reply, roughly, in the same terms as Dazzi or Messina»64 .

This absolute condemnation of abstractionism, which could certainly include Melotti’s favourite works, served to introduce an appreciation of Leoncillo’s sculpture: «the volumes are not pure, but replete and dripping with tone from inside and outside». Leaving aside all the distinctions made above, an intimate Baroque essence in this artist’s ceramic sculpture seems to be to be confirmed, endorsed almost, by a simple consideration: it was appreciated as such by the person who, like few others, contributed to the rediscovery and re-evaluation of the Baroque. It seems plausible, then, that Longhi, a great admirer of the Barocchetto artist Leoncillo, viewed the informal Leoncillo with greater diffidence [Fig. 56]. This would also explain the exclusion of the

63 CaRBoni 2003, p. 12. 64 longhi 1949 [1984], p. 68. Umbrian artist from the selection of sculptors destined to figure in the series Maestri della scultura for the 20th century: how surprising this choice was can be discerned from the tone of the 1968 letter with which Francesco Arcangeli communicated this news to Leoncillo himself, quoting in full the text of a missive sent to him by Franco Russoli, the co-director of the series:

«My dear friend, I am sending you the piece by Raimondi [Giuseppe] which I hope will not upset you. Russoli also writes to me ‘As concerns Leoncillo – whom I saw in Venice– I also believe that he is an artist who has delivered his ‘message’ with full poetic dedication […] For the ‘Masters of Sculpture’, Fabbri will not have a monographic issue as only Rosso, Boccioni, Martini, Manzù, Marini are included on the list, given the limited number of issues. However, there will be supplementary and compendiary issues, where Leoncillo will also have his part […]’. As you see it’s not all bad […] your Momi»65 .

In this «supplementary and compendiary» volume, published the following year, a ceramic piece by Leoncillo was reproduced depicting the famous theme of the Roman Mother Killed by the Germans (1944), in other words, a particularly representative work by the Leoncillo dearest to Longhi: almost fifteen years had passed since the Informal turn taken by the artist, who, in deference to Longhi’s idiosyncrasies, went down in history as the exponent of a “mournful Barocchetto”.

65 FioRuCCi 2019, p. 242.

ART WORKS

Roberto Cobianchi

Lucio Fontana Clam and Coral, 1936

Polychrome ceramic, 17 x 31 x 23 cm

Provenance Milan, Galleria del Milione Milan, private collection

«Depths of the sea, depths of the soul: Lucio Fontana’s ceramics preserve impressed upon them the drama of faraway waves and that of a living hand; the man and the waters have left coloured reflections upon them as a witness to their history»1. Thus the architect Ernesto Nathan Rogers began his review of the exhibition of Lucio Fontana’s ceramics held in April 1938 at the Galleria del Milione in Milan2, reproducing this work too with the title «Marine Elements». The sculpture appears with the title «Moule et corail, gris et noir/Shell and Coral; gray with black reflections» in the bilingual monograph that Erich. E. Baumbach devoted to Fontana and that was published in Milan in the same year3. As has been noted, it was Baumbach himself who first saw in Fontana’s ceramics «the same drive towards innovation that has hitherto only been acknowledged in his sculptural works and his drawings»4 . Clam and Coral was modelled and glazed in the first phase of the experimental encounter between Fontana and ceramics, at Albisola, working side by side with the extraordinary Futurist «potter» Tullio d’Albisola (Tullio Mazzotti) and “offered up to the flames” in the kilns of the manufactory founded by the latter’s father Giuseppe. Tullio d’Albisola and Fontana had met, as the former recalls, thanks to the art critic Edoardo Persico, who died prematurely in 1936, before his thirtieth birthday, and who must also have suggested the idea that the two collaborate: «Lucio Fontana was introduced to me by Edoardo Persico, in Genoa, on the monumental staircase of Palazzo Ducale during the Exhibition of wall sculpture of ’34… I enthusiastically accepted the idea of a ceramic version of unique pieces directly modelled by the sculptor of the mad horses. But Fontana only came to our kilns after the departure of his and my dear friend, in ’36. Since then, a hundred marvellous unique pieces with reflective and precious glazes bear his signature alongside the simple marks of the old potter of Albisola, and as

1 RogeRs 1938 (the article is now reproduced in Campiglio 2014, Plts 5-9). The work is catalogued in CRispolti 2006 [2015], I, p. 165, no. 36 SC 6. 2 Major subsequent exhibitions: Milan, Palazzo della Società per le Belle Arti ed Esposizione Permanente, La scultura colorata. Il colore del vero, 21 June - 6 September 2001; Bologna, Galleria d’Arte Moderna, La natura della natura morta da Manet ai nostri giorni, 1 December 2001 – 24 February 2002; Genova, Palazzo Ducale, Fontana. Luce e colore, 22 October 2008 - 15 February 2009; Paris, Galerie Karsten Greve, Lucio Fontana. Scultura/Sculpture, «Io sono uno scultore e non un ceramista», 31 March – 23 June 2012; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lucio Fontana: On the Threshold, 23 January – 14 April 2019 and Bilbao, Guggenheim Museum, Lucio Fontana: En el umbral, 17 May–29 September 2019. 3 BaumBaCh 1938, p. 53 (the monograph is reproduced in Campiglio 2014, Plts 10-65). 4 panCotto 1991, pp. 13-53. many, in wonderful vitrified sculptures, the famous crown of the Royal porcelain factory of Sèvres (1937)»5 . Indeed, in the summer and autumn of 1937, Fontana had gone to work at the Sèvres manufactory, where he discovered a new material, grès, with which he later modelled polychrome masterpieces such as the monumental Italic Torso. Some years later, in a famous programmatic declaration of his understanding of ceramics as a sculptor and not a ceramicist, Fontana also recalled his beginnings at Albisola: «It was not until 1936 that I began my real work in this field [ceramics] at the Mazzotti factory in Albisola with about fifty pieces: seaweed, butterflies, flowers, crocodiles, lobsters – a complete petrified and gleaming aquarium. The material was appealing; I could shape a seabed, a statue or a tangle of hair and impress upon it a pure and compact colour that was amalgamated by heat. Heat was a sort of intermediary, making the form and the colour permanent»6 . The astounding quality of the colours and iridescences of Clam and Coral, like that of its companion pieces in the magical seabed to which it belongs – like Coral and Black-and-Green Seashell or Octopus and Coral – continue to enchant us today like a dreamy dive «dans le Poème de la Mer, infusé d’astres, et lactescent, devorant les azures verts», from which we resurface, imperiously summoned back to reality by the «rough and anti-academic way in which the hand shaped the earth»7; the guileless hand of the sculptor Fontana who «detests lacy details and delicate nuances»8 .

5 d ’alBisola 1939 (reproduced in Campiglio 2014, Plts 68-74). 6 Fontana 1939 (reproduced in Campiglio 2014, Plts 75-76). See also Campiglio 1994. 7 RogeRs 1938 (reproduced in Campiglio 2014, Plts 5-9). 8 Fontana 1939 (reproduced in Campiglio 2014, Plts 75-76).

Lucio Fontana Christ, 1949

Ceramic with reflective glaze, 58 x 26.5 x 8.5 cm Signed and dated under the base: L. F. 49

Provenance Rome, private collection

This exceptional Christ in ceramic with a reflective glaze was presented by Lucio Fontana at the 1950 Venice Biennale, and published contextually in the exhibition catalogue dated the same year1; in reality, the piece had been executed during the previous year, as demonstrated by the autograph date on the underside of the base2. Fontana participated in this important international event in Venice with a set of ceramic pieces, «crockery and Christs»3, whose force as «true sculpture», despite the stance often reiterated by the artist – most famously in 1939: «I am a sculptor, not a ceramicist»4 – was nonetheless remarked already by Attilio Podestà in his review of the exhibition: «Of the three major names [in Italian sculpture of the «middle generation»], Fontana, Mirko and Fazzini, only the first is present at the Biennale and is also present to himself, with pieces of true sculpture: even though the good Fontana continues to repeat that he has made these ceramics as a diversion, since sculpture is now dead according to the meaning given to this work until the present»5 . After leaving the kilns of Albisola on his return to Argentina in 1940, where he taught as well as working as an artist, when he came back to Italy in the spring of 1947 Fontana immediately resumed modelling, firing and glazing new and extraordinary works at Albissola Marina; more specifically: «The sculptor lives at Pozzo Garitta (a marvellous little courtyard where the first ceramic kilns in Albisola stood centuries ago), in a large room furnished in exquisite taste»6: the studio-residence that he was to maintain until the end of the 1950s. This is a key decade, in which Fontana alternates between figurative subjects like our Christ, certainly more immediately accessible to the public but not for this reason requiring less effort from the artist, and Spatialist works, in a dichotomy whose weight he sometimes felt: «if I can, I will leave for Pozzo Garitta to-

1 Biennale 1950, p. 175, Plt. 49. 2 As well as in the catalogue of the Biennale, the work is reproduced in podestà 1950, p. 123; CaiRola 1981, p. 205, Plt. XVII; CRispolti 2006 [2015], I, no. 49 SC 18, p. 218. Registered at the Lucio Fontana Foundation of Milan as number 420/3. 3 From a letter from Fontana to the architect Mario Bardini of 7 July 1955, in luCio Fontana 1999, p. 138. At the 1950 Biennale, Fontana exhibited, in addition to our Christ, two large plates with battles. 4 Fontana 1939 (reproduced in Campiglio 2014, Plts 75-76). See also Campiglio 1994, pp. 34-41. 5 podestà 1950, p. 123. 6 FaBiani 1961 (quoted in panCotto 1991, p. 33). morrow […] hoping to settle down until September. Producing tons of ceramics that are ultimately more profitable than my holes, of which I am unfortunately still so fond!!»7 . It was from the 1940s onwards that the sculptor truly opened up to the expressive potential of the glazes and reflective metallic effects added during the third firing; he had certainly made occasional use of these in the late 1930s, in the early production fired in the kilns of Giuseppe Mazzotti (MGA Mazzotti Giuseppe Albisola) – see for example the Victory, the Stag or the Cockerel –, but that now took on new vigour thanks in part to the highly specialized technical assistance of Tullio d’Albisola’s brother-in-law, Giuseppe Baldantoni8. In March 1949, writing to the sculptor Pablo Edelstein, who had been his student at the Altamira Academy, the school that he had founded in Buenos Aires in 1946, Fontana also reveals his interest in this technique and his satisfaction at the results obtained: «How is your ceramic kiln going? [...] Do you make ceramics with reflective glazes? I have made some marvellous ones here, are you interested?»9 One of these «marvellous» ceramics is our Christ. Many masterpieces are characterized precisely by this reflective surface, starting from the Via Crucis of 194710; the coral-Via Crucis11, as it was described by Gio Ponti, to which the Christ is related not just formally, but as one of the most precocious and intense high points of this production, born out of an identical dramatic tension between form, light and colour: a teeming “Baroque” form, subverted by purplish gleams that traverse it unstoppably, in which the pale body of Christ, hanging from the concrescence of a cross in mourning garb, takes material form and simultaneously dissolves like ectoplasm. In 1962, in the introduction to the catalogue of the exhibition dedicated by the Pater gallery of Milan to Fontana’s ceramics, Marco Valsecchi recollects the master with nostalgic pleasure: «…on returning to his home country, to Albisola, next to the kilns of Tullio Mazzotti. His agile fingers rapidly rotating the damp clay, the decisive thumb marking the ditches, the caverns, or more accurately undoing the hard resistance of the surfaces: dancing figures in the freshness of the naked body, gladiators in combat, dizzying Harlequins, and the crucifixes that, I am not sure how, resemble certain Baroque holy water containers kept at the head of the bed: portable altars, contorted and swollen with volutes to form a triumph of the innocent domestic imagerie»12 . Thanks to his presence and his work at Albisola, Fontana also helped to support cultural life in a small town that in the space of a few years became one of northern Italy’s most lively artistic centres, frequented habitually by many other artists who wished to try their hands at ceramics, including Aligi Sassu, Agenore Fabbri, Asger Jorn, Giuseppe Capogrossi. It is thus no coincidence

7 From a letter from Fontana to the architect Mario Bardini of 7 July 1955, in Lucio Fontana 1999, p. 138. 8 BoChiCChio 2018a, pp. 81-84. 9 From a letter from Fontana to Pablo Edelstein of 25 March 1949, in Lucio Fontana 1999, pp.107-110, a p. 108.

10 CRispolti 2007.

11 Campiglio 2005, p. 128. 12 ValseCChi 1962 (quoted in panCotto 1991, p. 33).

that, already on 18 October 1952, the town council of Albissola Marina decided to make the «sculptor Lucio Fontana» an honorary citizen13 . The Christ has never changed hands and has been jealously kept by the family of the first collector who purchased it at the Venetian exhibition of 1950. The selling price, as stated by the lable still glued at the base of the piece, was 300,000 Liras Lucio Fontana Bullfight, ca. 1950-55

Polychrome ceramic, 38 x 73 x 8 cm Signature on the bottom left: l. fontana

Provenance Canada, private collection Private collection (courtesy of Galleria dello Scudo, Verona)

This Bullfight exemplifies Lucio Fontana’s finest ceramic production of the 1950s, though it belongs to a period in which figurative themes begin to be accompanied by Spatialist experiments1 . The subject of the relief, already favoured by Picasso, was, together with that of the battle, also among those preferred by Fontana, who developed it principally in large plates whose edges sometimes «open out at the extremities as if in so many lobes of leaves or so many petals»2, as they were described, in a judgement full of reservations, by Garibaldo Marussi in his review of the exhibition that the Milanese gallery Il Milione dedicated in 1950 to Fontana’s ceramics; however, these critical reservations remained an isolated instance within a reception that was generally enthusiastic and constant for this aspect of the artist’s production. A significant parallel is the large plate with a Bullfight in a private collection with flecks of gold added during a third firing, executed in 1950 at the La Fenice manufactory at Albisola Capo3 . However, in its rectangular format, strongly horizontal and lacking any hint of a functional purpose, the relief establishes a dialogue with the initial three-dimensional transpositions of the Spatial Concepts, in which the clay is repeatedly pierced or scratched4. Here, by contrast, the malleable material is raised at the top of the plaza de toros, scratched with abrupt, nervy movements to give life to the matador – an agile dancer– and to the bull, and, here and there, struck with quick “swipes”. The masterful final touch is given to these very concisely rendered forms by the polychromy, which illuminates them with a profoundly dramatic meaning that calls to mind Ernest Hemingway’s words in Death in the Afternoon (1932): «Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honour».

Lucio Fontana Bullfight, 1952

Bronze in two parts, 80 x 133 cm Signature and date on the bottom left: l. Fontana/52

Provenance Trivero, private collection Private collection

During the 1950s, Lucio Fontana devoted numerous ceramics to the topic of bullfighting, principally plates and some plaques, one of which is on display in this exhibition. However, this Bullfight, almost monumental in its scale, is exceptional because it is cast in bronze1 . After the funerary sculptures of the 1930s, which reached their peak with the Redeemer for the Castellotti Monument, and before the Spatialist cycle of the Natures (1959-60), the transmutation into metal of modelled clay is a truly rare “alchemy” in the sculptor’s oeuvre: an exception are the Horses Following Victory of 19362 – a presentation model for a colossal celebratory group made in plaster for the Salone della Vittoria at the VI Milan Triennale –, and a few other pieces, including a Bullfight in painted lead, finished with surface scratches, strongly characterized as a technical experiment3; by contrast, our bronze maintains all the immediacy of Fontana’s most free and virtuoso sculpture, and the jagged creasing of the surface is taken to an extreme: one piece detaches itself to float freely in space. This separation of the parts characterized some ceramics of these years, like the very elegant Madonna and Child with Angels of 19564, made up of two elements, and culminating on a monumental level with the high relief in painted and glazed refractory clay that decorates the façade of the church of the Assunta at Piani di Celle Ligure (1956-1958), in which Paolo Campiglio has rightly recognized «an instance of sacred sculpture analogous to the figurations executed on ceramic plates, in an architectural dimension […in which] the figures [...] draw life from the contrast between the dynamic and magmatic matter of the sculpture and the flat surface of the façade»5 . Whilst the bronze Bullfight is similarly unable to do without the back wall to come to life and do justice to the internal dynamism that animates it, the isolated “chip” is pure abstraction, devoid of any narrative responsibility and yet essential to the spatial completeness of the work. Leoncillo Leonardi Siren, 1939

Polychrome ceramic, 62 x 25 x 23 cm Signed: Leoncillo

Provenance Rome, Amerigo Terenzi collection Rome, Apolloni collection (courtesy Galleria del Laocoonte)

Together with the Harpy and the Hermaphrodite, the Siren1 makes up an extraordinary group known as the Monsters, «three imaginative caprices, splendidly fired, multicoloured and glazed»2 , as they were described by Ercole Maselli, exhibited in 1940 at the Milan Triennale, to which Leoncillo had been invited by Gio Ponti, and then again in 1943 in Rome– a few months before the Nazi occupation of the city– at the Galleria dello Zodiaco, founded shortly beforehand by the exuberant and beautiful Linda Chittaro3. At this collective exhibition entitled Giovani artisti italiani (Donnini, Leoncillo, Purificato, Scialoja, Turcato, Valenti, Vedova), the painter Virgilio Guzzi immediately saw not just the beauty and originality of Leoncillo’s pieces, but also that they were light years away from the decorative qualities inherent in ceramics: «A very important time for art ends this year at the Galleria dello Zodiaco with an exhibition by some very young artists. Some, like Scialoja, Purificato, Vedova, Valenti, were already known, others, like Leoncillo, Donnini and Turcato are revealing themselves to us today for the first time. Of the three unknown artists, we should immediately say that Leoncillo is the one who appears to our eyes as an artist who is already mature and original. His ceramics should without doubt be described as magnificent: and certainly not just for the rare splendour of the glazes, but for the originality of the invention, the vitality of their expressionist and Baroque contortions. And for a mythology that in the hands of this Umbrian modeller and painter works extremely well, and leads us to think of a poetic sentiment that might be the equivalent of certain states of mind and fantasies of Scipione. The Siren, and especially the Harpy, where those red tones attain a strong sensual intensity, and thus a lyrical quality of extreme rarity, are works that can certainly not be judged as products of the decorative arts. The fact is that we find ourselves in front of a new artist. The witty (and mournful) ceramicist is above all a poet who may reserve the most welcome of surprises for us»4 .

1 In general on this work see the critical comment by Enrico Mascelloni in Leoncillo 2018, pp. 40-45. 2 maselli 1943 (quoted from appella 2002, p. 118). 3 Major subsequent exhibitions: Spoleto, Chiostri di San Nicolò, Leoncillo. Esposizione antologica, 8 July – 8 September 1969; Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Leoncillo 1915-1968, 19 September – 28 October 1979; Rome, Galleria W. Apolloni – Spazio Babuino 136 – Galleria del Laocoonte, Leoncillo. Le Carte e le Ceramiche, 29 October 2018 – 28 February 2019. 4 guzzi 1943 (quoted from appella 2002, p. 117)

In 1939, a few years after his move to Rome in 1935, Leoncillo had moved to Umbertide, the epicentre of Umbria’s ceramic production, intending to perfect his technique and make use of the kilns of the Rometti manufactory, whose artistic director between 1929 and 1934 had been Corrado Cagli; it is in these kilns that the Monsters too were fired. The Siren is a masterpiece that draws life from the artist’s natural, yet simultaneously hard won and sensual, ability to shape the clay with strongly expressive accents, capable of superseding the reference to myth, companion to the almost contemporary – and also extraordinary – experiences of so many protagonists of the Roman artistic avant garde of the 1930s, starting with Cagli and Mirko Basaldella, gathering up the subtle threads of an approach that, as was precociously stressed by various critics, runs from Medardo Rosso to Scipione5. Whilst the volumes of the Siren are anything but pure, but rather «replete and dripping with tone from inside and outside»6 – to quote Roberto Longhi – , and would have been so regardless of the specific technique, the combination of colour and light typical of ceramics renders the figure pulsating and tragically alive. Formerly owned by an influential member of the PCI (Italian Communist Party), who was also an intellectual with clear artistic leanings, Amerigo Terenzi – a member immediately after the liberation of Rome in 1944 of the committee that organized the exhibition L’arte contro la barbarie. Artisti romani contro l’oppressione nazi-fascista, a brainchild of the newspaper l’Unità, in which Leoncillo participated with the two versions of the Roman Mother Killed by the Germans, for which he won the joint first prize for sculpture – the Siren is the only piece in the «trilogy» not to belong to a public museum: the Harpy, formerly in the collection of Cesare Brandi, and the Hermaphrodite are now in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome. Leoncillo Leonardi Two Trophies (models), 1940

Polychrome ceramic, 46 X 14 X 17 cm each

Provenance Rome, Cipriano Efisio Oppo collection Rome, private collection

These two “Leoncillian creations” are the preparatory models for the monumental Trophies intended to decorate the Palazzo della Civiltà italiana at E.U.R., commissioned from Leoncillo in late 1940 through the offices of Cipriano Efisio Oppo who, as the vice president of the Ente Autonomo Esposizione Universale di Roma, was also personally involved in selecting the art works to be placed in the buildings for the Universal Exposition planned for 1942 (E 42)1 . Executed at Umbertide, where Leoncillo had been living since 1939, the models – about a third of the size of the definitive pieces – had been approved nine months earlier if we are to believe the words of the sculptor, who mentioned them in a letter of July 1941 in which he complained to Oppo of the inexplicable and repeated postponement of the signature of the contract2. The ambitious project for E 42, dreamt of from 1935 when Rome announced its candidature to host the exhibition, had begun to waver after Italy’s entry into the war. However, the dreams of glory of the new-born empire took a long time to dissipate, and for Leoncillo too there was time to sign the contract for the two Trophies on 24 November 1941, and to deliver the finished works3 . Oppo came into possession of the models for the Trophies and also owned other masterpieces of Leoncillo’s early phase, of which he had certainly become “enamoured” when he saw them on display at the VII Milan Triennale between April and June of 1940: the four female busts representing the Seasons (1939). Kept together in their collecting history, the two models can be seen here for the first time with the finished works, allowing us to fully appreciate that the sculptor”s imagination had from the outset, and without hesitation, taken an anti-academic path, highly imaginative and expressive. Leoncillo responded to the theme inspired by the glory of imperial Rome, certainly suggested by Oppo, with that extreme freedom, full of irony and rebellion, that only his “sculpture with colour” had and continues to have.

Leoncillo Leonardi Two Trophies, 1941

Polychrome ceramic and glazes, 130 x 36 x 36 cm Signed and dated on the base: Leoncillo ‘41

Provenance Milan, private collection

This exceptional pair of Trophies, created to decorate the interior of a public building, the Palazzo della Civiltà italiana in Rome, should be counted among Leoncillo’s masterpieces for their virtuoso technique, chromatic qualities and inventive fantasy. The sculptor was asked to make the two works– in late 1940 – by an illustrious admirer, an individual who succeeded in combining his artistic work as a painter and that as a militant critic with political engagement as a member of parliament and, above all, a tireless effort to promote culture in his directorial roles at the Sindacato Nazionale Fascista delle Belle Arti: Cipriano Efisio Oppo. From 1936, Oppo was also heavily involved, as the vice president of the Ente Autonomo Esposizione Universale di Roma, in the organization of artistic competitions and initiatives connected to the preparation of the Universal Exposition planned for 1942 (E 42). It was in this competitive context that the commission from Leoncillo of the Trophies took shape, destined for the most famous of the buildings in Rome’s E.U.R district, that funded by the senator Giovanni Agnelli, on whose four identical façades we read in capital letters Mussolini’s saying: «A people of poets, artists, heroes, / saints, thinkers, scientists, / navigators, transmigrants»1 . From Umbertide, to which he had moved in 1939 so he could work at the kilns of the Ceramiche Rometti manufactory, on 2 April 1941 Leoncillo informed his client that he was unable to complete this project in accordance with the plan agreed, though work was already at an advanced stage: «Your Excellency, I have worked for forty days on the two “Trophies”; they are now ready for completion, ready to be worked up in ceramic, but just today I have been overcome by a multitude of scruples, preventing me from continuing my work. Large as they are, they seem extraneous to my particular inspiration, they seem to me to have betrayed the appeal of the topic. Forgive me, it is all my fault. I think I should make them smaller, or combine the inventions of the two into one very intense work. I write to ask for your sympathy, to know that you are nonetheless awaiting my work, as long as it is beautiful. You can be certain of this. I will make something very beautiful. For this reason, I can’t at present carry on, because I cannot give up on this more beautiful work that is near me. I eagerly await your reply. As concerns the price, which will must naturally

1 On the events surrounding the interior decoration of the Palazzo, which alongside the Trophies by Leoncillo was to contain other works that were never executed (two balustrades in porphyry with reliefs executed respectively by Bruno Giuliarelli and Edgardo Mannucci, and a marble plaque by Renato Rosatelli), see the entry by V. M. [Vincenzo Mazzarella] in E 42 1987, pp. 368-370. change, no agreement is necessary, I don’t care. On delivery I will accept whatever conditions your sage counsel will wish to apply. Your devoted Leoncillo Leonardi»2 . However, Oppo’s reply left no room for argument: in accordance with the preliminary agreement, the two Trophies were to measure «1.60 metres each»3 . Though Italy had entered the war over a year earlier, when on 11 July Leoncillo turned once again to Oppo with heartfelt words, the commission had not been withdrawn, through it had been held up by delays that seemed to the sculptor to be replete with «untruthful promises»: «Your Excellency, […] I am here at Umbertide, discouraged and tired, and in a state of poverty that does not even leave me the requisite freedom to procure the means for executing my ceramics. It is about the work for E.U.R that I wish to talk to you: to beg you to have me execute this work for which the models, on which I expended time and energy, have been accepted. Nine months have passed since their acceptance, and my contact has been put off from day to day, from week to week, from month to month. I have come so many times to E.U.R. on invitation from the Statistical Office to define the many things that were defined; I have issued so many reminders and in every tone of voice, and each time I was answered with promises, but all equally untruthful. So that, in the end, nothing is left in my soul than the feeling of having been constantly taken for a ride, and that of my humiliation and my inability to obtain my dues, and which are never contested but are in effect denied. Though I can find no explanation for all this, I am nonetheless certain that you know nothing of it […] All that remains to me now is the hope that you will understand me and help me. I am comforted by the thought of the esteem and affection that you have shown to me so many times, at this moment of weakness and exasperation»4 . The contract was approved and rendered executive on 24 November 19415, but the cancellation of E 42 also led to the temporary oblivion of the two Trophies, which in 1945 were bought back by Leoncillo himself, who presented them to the Roman audience at the Mostra dei capidopera dello Studio di Villa Giulia di Enrico Galassi, the exhibition held in March-April 1946 at the Studio d’Arte Palma di Pietro Maria Bardi. Seen alongside his Balustrade of the Caryatids6 (one of which is present in the exhibition), and the works of the other artists and artisans gathered by the multi-faceted painter and mosaicist Galassi in the studio established in a wing of Villa Poniatowsky in Rome7, the Trophies must also have revealed themselves for what they really were: not bombastic symbols of “undying glory” but the mature fruits of a reborn and ironic “ephemeral Baroque”, superb furnishings worthy of a modern Versailles.

2 mazzaRella 1990, p. 14. 3 V. M. [Vincenzo Mazzarella] in E 42 1987, p. 369. 4 Benzi 1986, p. 185. 5 V. M. [Vincenzo Mazzarella] in E 42 1987, p. 368. 6 See the entry on one of the Caryatids in this catalogue.

7 Cassani 2012.

Leoncillo believed strongly in the value and beauty of these works, to which he had devoted a long gestation, to the point that he chose to complete them, not at Umbertide, but at Gualdo Tadino at the Società Ceramica Luca della Robbia, to enrich their already rich palette with sumptuous gold highlights added during the third firing, which he had never used previously; despite the dissatisfaction expressed in his letter to Oppo of April 1941, the result was undoubtedly «a beautiful thing», so much so that a few years later the sculptor returned to the theme, modelling and glazing a new monumental Trophy to decorate a bar in Rome, published in 1948 by Gio Ponti in the magazine Domus. With his habitual critical acumen, Ponti also captured the highly personal nature of this piece: «The decoration of a bar in Rome has been the opportunity for the creation of this great “Trophy” by Leoncillo, a true Leoncillian creation, and an example of that “sculpture with colour” that he preaches, and of the fantastical idea of which he is so fond – that of the trees covered in armour and draperies, turned almost into theatrical characters. The same idea persists in the panels (subtly pervaded – see the sculptural head and the column – with that pinch of De Chirican fantasy that now belongs more to our time than to De Chirico himself)»8 . Leaving aside the De Chirican fantasy, these words could also be used to describe the Trophies for E 42, and that «fantastical idea […] of the trees covered in armour and draperies» must have appealed greatly to the architect – and indeed, flattered him – since for the Trionfo da tavola per le Ambasciate d’Italia commissioned by the Italian government in 1929 and executed in white porcelain and gold by the Richard Ginori manufactory, he himself had previously commissioned a Trophy (drawn by Tomaso Buzzi) in the form of a tree trunk covered in a breastplate, helmet, shield and weapons; an exquisite piece that Leoncillo must have remembered affectionately, given the mutual friendly esteem that bound the two9. It therefore does not seem coincidental that Leoncillo placed his two Trophies on a base of sinuous outline, as Ponti had previously done, absent in the models, to which he then “attached” a handled cartouche with the legend «Trophy», thus ironically “musealizing” these teetering panoplies as one might do with a collector’s item. Truly with these Trophies «Leoncillo creates objects that aim to insinuate doubt over where to place them»10, and with this doubt an unexpected and pleasant sense of disorientation.

8 ponti 1948, p. 27. On this Trophy see the entry by Enrico Mascelloni in Leoncillo 1990, p. 51. 9 Buzzi’s preparatory drawing for the Trophy is reproduced here in the essay by Andrea Bacchi. On the relationship between Ponti and Leoncillo see FioRuCCi 2019, pp. 225-228. 10 mazzaRella 1990, p. 15. Leoncillo Leonardi Two-Faced Caryatid, ca. 1945.

Thrice fired polychrome ceramic, 82 x 18 x 18 cm

Provenance Rome, Umberto Carpi de Resmini collection Rome, Galleria Carlo Virgilio & C.

This Two-Faced Caryatid is one of a series of pieces for a balustrade, presented by Leoncillo at the Mostra dei capidopera dello Studio di Villa Giulia di Enrico Galassi. The exhibition, held in Rome in March-April 1946 at the Studio d’Arte Palma di Pietro Maria Bardi, and warmly received by Gio Ponti1, displayed the works made by the artists and artisans gathered by the multi-faceted painter and mosaicist Enrico Galassi in the studio established in a wing of Villa Poniatowsky in Rome so that they could devote themselves to creating decorative pieces to furnish aristocratic residences2. The participants in this short-lived experience of the Studio at Villa Giulia included, among others, Consagra, Mirko, Afro, Tamburi, Scardia, Montanarini, Gentilini, Maccari and Pietro Cascella. Enchanted by the «great triumphal and damned procession of caryatids», Lisa Ponti, in an article in Stile, the magazine that her father Gio had originally established with the name of Lo stile nella casa e nell’arredamento (1941-43), found weighty words to describe the absolute lack of ornamentalism of these astounding creations by Leoncillo, which reveal themselves to be: «... living and quivering tangles, which have left his hands, helpless, ready to retreat: they move blindly and painfully like internal organs and are so damp, brilliant, rich, coloured, iridescent. Then, on some of their faces we are surprised by suddenly spiritual features – like the figures created by clouds -: these are veiled and vivid faces that bear traces of pain, as if they were St Sebastians... And their arms and draperies have shadows and depths as in painting, and they spread fear, they move the air»3 . Alongside a group photograph and numerous details, Lisa Ponti’s article ends with a detailed description of the whole balustrade that is of importance to us, revealing a variety of formal solutions of which the Two-Faced Caryatid is just one possibility: The balustrade is composed of 2 elements consisting of 4 figures each, one at the head of the staircase and the other at its end, of 2 consisting of 3 figures in the two corners of the flight of stairs, and, in between, others consisting of 2 figures facing in opposite directions so as to show both faces. In the two elements with 4 figures, the dominant colour is violet in one and a warm

1 ponti 1946a. Enthusiastic was the praise that Toti Scialoja reserved expressly for Leoncillo’s balustrade in his review of the exhibition entitled Mirko e Leoncillo in una mostra di arti applicate, promptly published in 1946 in the magazine Mercurio (now in Toti Scialoja 2015, pp. 126-131). 2 On Galassi and the Studio at Villa Giulia see Cassani 2012.

3 ponti 1946b, pp. 27-28.

green in the other; in those with 3 figures, an orangey red in one and a reddish brown in the other; and in those with 2 figures blue green. In this way, the staircase is designed, in its sculpture and colour, in accordance with its function. The gold present in all the elements links them to each other. The invention, with groups consisting of 4 figures with just 4 legs, those of 3 with 3, and those of 2 with 2, serves to differentiate between the elements depending on their architectural function without making the richer ones excessively large compared to the others»4 . In 1947 Gio Ponti, a great admirer of Leoncillo’s work, also discussed this balustrade, considered the artist’s finest creation up until that point: «This balustrade, for example, was made to rise from the profoundest depths of Leoncillo’s being, up to today it is his major work thanks to the force of his imaginative energy which makes us think of the greatest periods of court art»5 . The allusion to the famous Caryatids of the Erechtheion6 is complicated by the two faces of Leoncillo’s sinuous figure, almost identical in their posture and gestures, though on one side the slightly crossed legs are covered on the lower part by the drapery, whilst on the other one leg remains bare. However, it is Leoncillo’s masterful use of colour that transfigures this creature, so that her magical milk-white skin, marbled with violet iridescences, lights up in contrast to the cobalt drapery shimmering with gilding added in the third firing. The balustrade as a whole never found a purpose and was eventually dismembered: one TwoFaced Caryatid, for example, figures among the ornaments packed into one of the glass display cases in the elegant trans-Atlantic liner Conte Grande, renovated, after being captured during the war by the Americans between 1943 and 1945, by Gio Ponti and Nino Zoncada7. Four of these Two-Faced Caryatids, still carrying a length of the architrave-handrail on their head, are on display today in the Galleria d’Arte Moderna Giovanni Carandente in Palazzo Collicola at Spoleto, whilst another is in the Claudio and Elena Cerasi collection8. Another piece, previously presented at the exhibition in Matera of 20029 and now in a private collection in Umbertide, was displayed at the exhibition dedicated by the Fa.Mo. Museo Rometti in Umbertide to Lucio Fontana and Leoncillo in September-October 201810 . The Studio at Villa Giulia saw the creation of «exceptional pieces» in which Gio Ponti recognized that «the dignity of antiquity, like the vitality of modernity, is not a question of time. When an object is made, regardless of immediate calculations about price and labour, to endure in time, we can say that it is already ancient, in other words outside the time in which we live, and this is the

4 iBid., p. 29. 5 ponti 1947, pp. 216-219. 6 Ferrari 1960, p. 7. In general for Leoncillo’s allusions to ancient sculpture see CoRgnati 2019, with a reference to the Caryatids on p. 42. 7 A historic photograph of the display case with Leoncillo’s Two-Faced Caryatid is published by Giuseppe Appella in leonCillo 2002, p. 130. 8 Apolloni 2018, pp. 12-13. Fagiolo dell ’aRCo 2016, p. 121. 9 leonCillo 2002, p. 42, cat. no. 12, (Courtesy of the Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna). 10 Barocco e Barocchetto 2018, pp. 60-61. privilege of art alone»11. In keeping with this creative spirit, the balustrade was also conceived as a sumptuous ornament and executed using a mould – exceptionally in Leoncillo’s work –, at least for the figures with just two faces like ours. However, the artist subsequently worked on each figure, adding obvious retouches and variations before firing and the subsequent application of the pigments, so that both the polychromy and the modelling of each piece differs. The balustrade presented at the exhibition of 1946 could be extended depending on its specific purpose and the requests of the potential client, as evidenced by the existence of some Two-Faced Caryatids in biscuit, ready for glazing, one of which now belongs to the Marignoli collection in Spoleto12 .

Fausto Melotti

1. Untitled, ca. 1949

Polychrome ceramic, 53 × 22.5 × 18 cm

Provenance Private collection

2. Untitled, ca. 1950

Polychrome ceramic, 81 × 25 × 27 cm Signed on the base: Melotti

Provenance Milan, private collection

3. Untitled, ca. 1951

Polychrome ceramic, 42 x 11.5 x 10 cm Signed on the inside: Melotti

Provenance Private collection

4. Untitled, ca. 1951-52

Polychrome ceramic, 62 × 16 × 16 cm Signed under the base: Melotti

Provenance Milan, private collection 5. Untitled, ca. 1950 Enamelled ceramic, 75 x 25 x 27 cm Signed under the base: Melotti

Provenance Milan, private collection

The five female figures collected here are the “slightly younger” sisters of the girl who delicately holds two little birds in her left hand, dating to 19481, and of the many others that Melotti modelled from then on, effectively for a decade, before once again plunging into that abstract work already begun in the 1930s and that he believed did true justice to his nature as a sculptor. These extremely elegant «delicate paper creations» were soon given space in the magazine Domus in 1948 by Gio Ponti, who expressed regret that he was unable to do justice, in the black and white of the reproductions, to the exceptional quality of their polychrome glaze: «Until colour reproductions become possible, we will be unable to provide a satisfactory representation of the works of Fausto Melotti, which – like this figure with a little bird in her hand – almost resemble delicate and hollow paper creations in ceramic, imbued with the most unexpected glazes. In recent years, Melotti – to whom we will devote an article in the next few issues – and who signs himself “Sette Punti”, has been responsible for a truly astounding ceramic production that goes from diversions in the form of enamelled necklaces and then of his famous coffee cups and “misshapen animals” to the beautiful flanged bowls and fantastical pieces – like this airy figure, fresh in its invention – and the sculptural pieces […], of which Melotti is so fond. This style of ceramics, which so successfully “plays with fire”, is astounding in its outcomes»2 . Melotti, «a pioneering abstractionist»3, had devoted over twenty years of work to ceramics, presenting his pieces in highly prestigious venues, starting from the Venice Biennales of 1948 and 1950. Nonetheless, from the 1960s onwards he attempted to present this production as stemming from a need to provide for his family: «I invented a sort of ceramics that was very popular and that provided me with money, allowing me to live comfortably. Later, at a certain point, people realized that I wasn’t bad as a sculptor either and I gave up ceramics»4. Despite repeated assertions in this vein, Melotti’s ceramics were always seen as possessing an independent and vital quality, and more recent critical studies have identified in these works a semantic complexity that goes far beyond Melotti’s hallmark “delicacy”5 .

1 Fausto Melotti 2003, p. 97, Fig. 9. 2 ponti 1948a, p. 29. 3 Camini 1950, p. 40. 4 mulas 1992, p. 31. 5 CaRBone 2003.

Compared to earlier works like the Daphne of 1933, Martinian in its inspiration, in our later female figures – untitled and lacking any narrative reference – we see, as Germano Celant has observed, an effective «solidification of the impalpable», that, aside from any need for economic sustenance, «[…] should be connected to the turmoil of the senses felt by an idealist – whose studio and whose utopias have been destroyed by a historic tragedy [the war] – who wishes to retake possession of his illusions and his dreams, no longer ideal but individual»6 . Mannerist in their proportions, with small heads and slender arms, these creatures, dressed in fine slips of clay cut and folded with apparent nonchalance, draw in an absolutely personal way on the mythical world of antiquity, and, like new Tanagra figurines, present an infinite variety of gestures and dance steps, in tune with well-controlled harmonies. Equally, the colours, manipulated by the witchcraft of heat, heighten the sense of abstract sublimity; and today we too ask ourselves about the provenance and reappearance of these magical beings «[…] wandering, like floating fragments, unmoored from who knows what depths, alone and travelling through what Melotti calls the “no-man’s land”»7 . The earliest figure presented at this exhibition8 (1), in the highly expressive tones of its glaze, still resembles Folly9 of 1948, which Melotti exhibited in that year at the XXIV Venice Biennale, and to an even greater extent the two Caryatids executed in 1950 for the Conte Verde liner10; it is thus to this chronological interval that we must attribute its creation, at the early stages of a journey that will find in the theme of the female figure one of the sculptor’s favourite topics. By contrast, another two of our ceramics, one presumably of 195011 (2) and the other slightly later12 (4), present a polychromy playing on the light tones of a lunar white that shades into the pink veined with grey, light blue and violet characteristic of many of these works, starting with the aforementioned girl holding two little birds in her left hand. In the contrast between the iridescent white bust and the black of the “lava-like” enveloping garment, the smallest piece in our group13 (3) shows similarities to a limited number of figures executed in the early 1950s14. Finally, completing our overview of this specific aspect of Melotti’s production, pride of place goes to a haughty figure with a rare metallic glaze (5)15, another masterpiece by this sculptor-ceramicist repeatedly described as a “wizard” «for the enigmatic origin of his figures that [...] seem to spring from the fire»16 .

6 Celant 1994b, I, p. XIV. 7 Camini 1950, p. 40. 8 Certified on photograph no. 1949 14 of the Fausto Melotti Archive in Milan. 9 Celant 1994a, I, no. 1948 1, p. 75. 10 iBid., I, no. 1950 3 and 1950 4, p. 82. 11 iBid., I, no. 1950 10, p. 84; Fausto Melotti 2003, no. 33, p. 106. 12 iBid., I, no. 1951–1952 6, p. 89; Fausto Melotti 2003, no. 28, p. 105. 13 Certified on photograph no. 1951 10 of the Fausto Melotti Foundation in Milan. 14 See for example Celant 1994a, I, no. 1953 1, p. 93. 15 iBid., I, no. 1950 9, p. 105; Fausto Melotti 2003, no. 29, p. 105. 16 ponti 1950, p. 41.

BIBLIOGRAFIA

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Camini 1950 Camini, figure e vasi di Fausto Melotti, in «Domus», 1950, n. 246, pp. 38-42.

Campiglio 1994 Paolo Campiglio, «Io sono uno scultore e non un ceramista». La ceramica di Lucio Fontana nella seconda metà degli anno Trenta: uno scritto e alcune ceramiche inedite, in «Faenza: bollettino del Museo internazionale delle ceramiche in Faenza», LXXX (1994), pp. 34-41.

Campiglio 2005 Paolo Campiglio, Tra barocco e avanguardia, in «FMR», N.S. 9 (2005), pp. 116-132.

Campiglio 2014 Paolo Campiglio, Lucio Fontana “Torso italico”, Milano 2014.

Campiglio 2017 Paolo Campiglio, Su alcune sculture di Fontana, in Lucio Fontana scultore. Dalla terra al cosmo, catalogo della mostra (Milano, Galleria Gracis) a cura di Luciano Tellaroli – Paolo Campiglio, Milano 2017, pp. 9-12.

CaRBoni 2003 Massimo Carboni, L’angelo del fare. Fausto Melotti e la ceramica, in Fausto Melotti. L’opera in ceramica, (pubblicato in occasione della mostra del Mart di Rovreto) a cura di Antonella Commellato - Marta Melotti, Milano 2003, pp. 11-24.

Cassani 2012 Alberto Giorgio Cassani, Galassi. L’artista “fuorilegge”, in «La pie», LXXXI (2012), 1, pp. 26-31.

Celant 1994a Germano Celant, Melotti catalogo generale delle sculture e dei bassorilievi, 2 voll., Milano 1994.

Celant 1994b Germano Celant, Fausto Melotti, un concerto di idee e di forme, in Germano Celant, Melotti catalogo generale delle sculture e dei bassorilievi, 2 voll., Milano 1994, I, pp. VII-XXII.

Commellato 2003 Antonella Commellato, Lotta. Materia prepotente / cervello luminoso, in Fausto Melotti. L’opera in ceramica, (pubblicato in occasione della mostra del Mart di Rovreto) a cura di Antonella Commellato - Marta Melotti, Milano 2003, pp. 27-67.

CoRgnati 2019 Martina Corgnati, À rebours. Ricordi antichi, arcaici e medievali nell’opera di Leoncillo Leonardi. Note per una ricognizione critica, in Leoncillo materia radicale opere 1958-1968, catalogo della mostra (Verona, Galleria dello Scudo) a cura di Massimo Di Carlo – Laura Lorenzoni – Enrico Mascelloni, Milano 2019, pp. 41-49.

CRispolti 1959 [2004] Enrico Crispolti, Carriera “barocca” di Fontana, in «Il Verri», III (1959), n. 3, pp. 101-118, ripubblicato in Carriera “barocca” di Fontana. Taccuino critico 1959-2004 e Carteggio 19581967, a cura di Paolo Campiglio, Milano 2004, pp. 23-33.

CRispolti 1971 Enrico Crispolti, Omaggio a Lucio Fontana, Assisi 1971.

CRispolti 2002 Enrico Crispolti, Spazialismo, futurismo e barocco: appunti su una prospettiva tutta fontaniana, in Lucio Fontana: metafore barocche, catalogo della mostra (Verona, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Palazzo Forti) a cura di Giorgio Cortenova, Venezia 2002, pp. XLI-XLVII.

CRispolti 2006 [2015] Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana. Catalogo ragionato di sculture, dipinti, ambientazioni, 2 voll., Milano 2006, ed. 2015.

CRispolti 2007 Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana Via Crucis 1947, Roma 2007.

d ’alBisola 1939 Tullio d’Albisola, Lucio Fontana, in Lino Berzonini. Lucio Fontana, catalogo della mostra (Genova, Galleria Genova), Genova 1939.

del puppo 2019 Alessandro Del Puppo, Egemonia e consenso. Ideologie visive nell’arte del Novecento, Macerata 2019.

E 42 1987 E 42 utopia e scenario del regime. II. Urbanistica, architettura, arte e decorazione, a cura di Maurizio Calvesi – Enrico Guidoni – Simonetta Lux, Venezia 1987.

Fabbrica della bellezza 2017 La fabbrica della bellezza. La manifattura Ginori e il suo popolo di statue, catalogo della mostra (Firenze, Museo Nazionale del Bargello) a cura di Tomaso Montanari – Dimitrios Zikos, Firenze 2017.

FaBiani 1961 Enzo Fabiani, Un gaucho della Pampa ha fondato lo spazialismo, in «Gente», 10 novembre 1961, pp. 56-58.

Fagiolo dell ’aRCo 2016 Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco, Scuola romana e Novecento italiano. La Collezione Claudio e Elena Cerasi, Milano 2016.

Fausto Melotti 2003 Fausto Melotti. L’opera in ceramica, (pubblicato in occasione della mostra del Mart di Rovreto) a cura di Antonella Commellato – Marta Melotti, Milano 2003.

FeRgonzi 1986 Flavio Fergonzi, Terra come materia, ceramiche e terrecotte di Arturo Martini, Lucio Fontana, Fausto Melotti, Leoncillo Leonardi, Nanni Valentini, catalogo della mostra (Torino, Galleria d’arte Martano) con un saggio di Flavio Fergonzi ed una antologia di scritti, Torino 1986.

FeRRaRi 1960 Oreste Ferrari, Momenti di Leoncillo, in «Arte Oggi», II (1960), n. 7, pp. 7-9.

FioRuCCi 2019 Lorenzo Fiorucci, Documenti per una storia di Leoncillo. La corrispondenza con Ponti, Longhi, Brandi, Arcangeli, in Leoncillo materia radicale opere 1958-1968, catalogo della mostra (Verona, Galleria dello Scudo) a cura di Massimo Di Carlo – Laura Lorenzoni – Enrico Mascelloni, Milano 2019, pp. 225 – 245.

Fontana 1939 Lucio Fontana, Le mie ceramiche, in «Tempo», 21 settembre 1939.

Fontana [1946] 1970 Lucio Fontana, Manifesto bianco, traduzione italiana del testo redatto nel 1946 da Fontana e allievi, in Lucio Fontana, Concetti spaziali, a cura di Paolo Fossati, Torino 1970, pp. 117-126.

Fontana [1951] 1970 Lucio Fontana, Manifesto tecnico dello spazialismo, in Lucio Fontana, Concetti spaziali, a cura di Paolo Fossati, Torino 1970, p. 133.

Fontana 1951 Lucio Fontana, Presentazione, in Pablo Picasso. Ceramiche, catalogo della mostra (Milano, Galleria del Naviglio), Milano 1951.

Fontana 2016 Sara Fontana, Sculture vestite a festa. L’avventura di Melotti nella ceramica, in Fausto Melotti. Trappolando, catalogo della mostra (Milano, Montrasio Arte; Roma, De Crescenzo & Viesti) a cura di Sara Fontana – Ruggero Montrasio, Cinisello Balsamo 2016, pp. 12-51.

geddo 1996 Cristina Geddo, Alessandro Magnasco: una fortuna critica senza confini, in Alessandro Magnasco 1667-1749, catalogo della mostra (Milano, Palazzo Reale) a cura di Ettore Camesasca - Marco Bona Castellotti, Milano 1996, pp. 39-50.

giolli 1931 Raffaello Giolli, Esposizioni milanesi – È scultura?, in «Cronache latine», Milano, 19 dicembre 1931.

guttuso 2013 Renato Guttuso, Scritti, a cura di Marco Carapezza, Milano 2013.

guzzi 1943 Virgilio Guzzi, Mostra allo “Zodiaco”, in «Italia», Roma, 8 luglio 1943.

Leoncillo 1990 Leoncillo mostra antologica, catalogo della mostra (Roma, Galleria Arco Farnese) a cura di Lucia Stefanelli Torossi, Roma 1990.

Leoncillo 1995 Leoncillo: opere 1938-1952, catalogo della mostra (Faenza, Museo Internazionale della Ceramica) a cura di Debora Ferrari – Enrico Mascelloni, Milano 1995.

Leoncillo 2002 Leoncillo. Opere dal 1938 al 1968, catalogo della mostra (Matera, Chiese rupestri Madonna delle Virtù e San Nicola dei Greci – Sasso Barisano e Circolo La Scaletta) a cura di Giuseppe Appella – Vittorio Rubiu – Fabio Sargentini, Roma 2002.

Leoncillo 2018 Leoncillo. Le ceramiche, a cura di Marco Fabio Apolloni – Monica Cardarelli, Roma 2018.

longhi 1913 [1961] Roberto Longhi, I pittori futuristi [in «La Voce», 1913] in Edizione delle opere complete di Roberto Longhi, Firenze 1956-2000, vol. I, Scritti giovanili, 1912-1922, 2 voll., 1961, I, pp. 47-54.

longhi 1914 [1961] Roberto Longhi, La scultura futurista di Boccioni [in «Libreria della Voce», 1914] in Edizione delle opere complete di Roberto Longhi, Firenze 1956-2000, vol. I, Scritti giovanili, 1912-1922, 2 voll., 1961, I, pp. 133-162.

longhi 1949 [1984] Roberto Longhi, Lettera a Corrado Del Conte [1949; pubb. 1954] in Edizione delle opere complete di Roberto Longhi, Firenze 1956-2000, vol. XIV, Scritti sull’Otto e Novecento, 1925-1966, 1984, pp. 67-70.

longhi 1954 [1984] Roberto Longhi, Leoncillo [pubb. 1954] in Edizione delle opere complete di Roberto Longhi, Firenze 1956-2000, vol. XIV, Scritti sull’Otto e Novecento, 1925-1966, 1984, pp. 70-74.

Lucio Fontana 1991 Lucio Fontana. La scultura in ceramica, catalogo della mostra (Bologna, Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna) a cura di Pier Giovanni Castagnoli – Fabrizio D’Amico, Milano 1991. Lucio Fontana 1999 Lucio Fontana, Lettere 1918-1968, a cura di Paolo Campiglio, Milano 1999.

Lucio Fontana 2012 Lucio Fontana. Scultura/Sculpture, «Io sono uno scultore e non un ceramista», catalogo della mostra (Parigi, Galerie Karsten Greve), Paris 2012.

Lucio Fontana 2017 Lucio Fontana scultore. Dalla terra al cosmo, catalogo della mostra (Milano, Galleria Gracis) a cura di Luciano Tellaroli – Paolo Campiglio, Milano 2017.

Lucio Fontana 2018 Lucio Fontana e Albisola, catalogo della mostra (Albisola Marina, MuDA/Savona, Museo d’arte di Palazzo Gavotti e Museo della Ceramica) a cura di Luca Bochicchio – Enrico Crispolti – Paola Valenti, Albissola Marina 2018.

Lucio Fontana 2019 Lucio Fontana. On the Threshold, catalogo della mostra (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art ) a cura di Iria Candela, New Haven-London 2019.

masCelloni 1990 Enrico Mascelloni, Viaggio al termine della notte, in Leoncillo, catalogo della mostra (Roma, Galleria Arco Farnese), a cura di Lucia Stefanelli Torossi, Roma 1990, pp. 7-14.

maselli 1943 Ercole Maselli, Mostre d’arte, in «Il Lavoro Fascista», Roma, 9 luglio 1943.

mazzaRella 1990 Vincenzo Mazzarella, Leoncillo gioca con i Trofei, in Il Trofeo. XXX Concorso Internazionale della Ceramica d’Arte Gualdo Tadino, Gualdo Tadino 1990, pp. 14-22.

mulas 1992 Antonia Mulas, Tre ore con Fausto Melotti, Milano 1992.

noRton 1914 Richard Norton, Bernini and other studies in the history of art, New York 1914.

NovEcENto sEdotto 2010 Novecento sedotto. Il fascino del Seicento fra le due guerre, catalogo della mostra (Firenze, Villa Bardini), a cura di Valentina Gensini-Lucia Mannini-Anna Mazzanti, Firenze 2010.

panCotto 1991 Pier Paolo Pancotto, Fortuna critica della scultura in ceramica di Lucio Fontana, in Lucio Fontana. La scultura in ceramica, catalogo della mostra (Bologna, Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna) a cura di Pier Giovanni Castagnoli – Fabrizio D’Amico, Milano 1991, pp. 13-53.

peRsiCo 2016 Edoardo Persico, Notizie dalla modernità. Tutte le opere, 2 voll., Torino 2016.

Pinsel 2012 Johann Georg Pinsel: un sculpteur baroque en Ukraine au XVIIIe siècle, catalogo della mostra (Parigi, Musée du Louvre) a cura di Jan K. Ostrowski - Guilhem Scherf, Paris 2012.

podestà 1950 Attilio Podestà, La XXV Biennale di Venezia. Il Padiglione italiano. Le personali: Carrà, Severini, Semeghini, Magnelli. I pittori. Gli scultori, in «Emporium», CXII (1950), pp. 99-124.

ponti 1946a Gio Ponti, Fantasia degli Italiani, in «Stile», I, n. 12, dicembre 1946, pp. 16-23.

ponti 1946b L. P. [Lisa Ponti], La balaustra di Leoncillo, in «Stile», I, n. 12, dicembre 1946, pp. 26-29.

ponti 1947 Gio Ponti, Leoncillo Leonardi Ceramics, in «Graphis», XIX, novembre 1947, pp. 216-219.

ponti 1948a Gio Ponti, Picasso convertirà alla ceramica, in «Domus», 1948, n. 226, pp. 24-31.

ponti 1948b Lisa Ponti, Prima astratto, poi barocco, ora spaziale, in «Domus», 1948, n. 229, pp. 36-37.

ponti 1948c Lisa Ponti, Biennale dopo la guerra, in «Domus», 1948, n. 228, pp. 34-38.

ponti 1950 Lisa Ponti, Il mago Melotti, in «Domus», 1950, n. 252/53, p. 41.

Raimondi 2003 Ezio Raimondi, Barocco moderno. Roberto Longhi e Carlo Emilio Gadda, Milano 2003.

RogeRs 1938 Ernesto N. Rogers, Lucio Fontana e le sue ceramiche, in «Natura», XI, agosto 1938. Rossi 1963 Bruno Rossi, L’astronauta dell’arte. Dialogo con Lucio Fontana, in «Settimo giorno», XVI, 22 gennaio 1963, pp. 47-51.

Ruiz de inFante 2002 Josune Ruiz de Infante, La scultura di Leoncillo negli anni Trenta: i contatti con la Scuola romana, in «Faenza: bollettino del Museo internazionale delle ceramiche in Faenza», LXXXVIII (2002), pp. 133-151.

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Toti Scialoja 2015 Toti Scialoja critico d’arte scritti in “Mercurio”, 1944-1948, I, a cura di Antonio Tarasco, Roma 2015.

simonato 2018 Lucia Simonato, Bernini scultore. Il difficile dialogo con la modernità, Milano 2018.

sinisgalli 1934 Leonardo Sinisgalli, La scultura di Lucio Fontana, in «L’Italia letteraria», 24 novembre 1934.

ValseCChi 1962 Marco Valsecchi, Ceramiche di Lucio Fontana, catalogo della mostra (Galleria Pater, febbraio 1962), Milano 1962.

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Finito di stampare Tipografia Esperia - Lavis (TN)

Nel settembre del 2019, in occasione della Biennale dell’Antiquariato di Firenze, ho sperimentato per la prima volta un accostamento fra due sculture in ceramica di Fausto Melotti ed una tela di Gian Battista Tiepolo. Il risultato è stato talmente convincente che mi sono chiesto se si sia trattato solo di una fortunata coincidenza, oppure se effettivamente esista un preciso nesso stilistico fra questi due artisti. Da quel momento questo interrogativo non ha smesso di incuriosirmi, tanto che ho voluto ampliare la mia ricerca ad altri due protagonisti della scultura italiana del XX secolo: RITORNO AL BAROCCOLucio Fontana e Leoncillo Leonardi. Rileggendo gli scritti di Fontana, mi sono accorto che il termine barocco ricorre molte volte, sia nelle dichiarazioni di poetica, sia nel più Fontana Leoncillo Melottiimportante testo teorico, ovvero nel Manifesto tecnico dello Spazialismo. Eppure, per quanto ciò possa sembrare incredibile, nessuno si era mai cimentato finora in una ricerca approfona cura di Andrea Bacchidita, per capire innanzitutto che cosa intenda Fontana quando parla di Barocco e, in secondo luogo, se esista non solo una generica affinità di gusto, ma anche una precisa rispondenza con le opere del passato. Anche negli studi su Leoncillo – a cominciare da Roberto Longhi – si fa spesso riferimento all’arte barocca senza tuttavia approfondire la questione. Per questo motivo ho deciso di commissionare ad Andrea Bacchi - grande conoscitore della scultura italiana del XVII e del XVIII secolo – uno studio specifico sull’argomento, in cui la questione venisse affrontata finalmente in modo sistematico e il più possibile approfondito.

Matteo Lampertico

ISBN978-88-8273-181-6