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art centres of Faenza and Albisola - give substance to rooms en vogue,and on the other hand,heavily impeded
the spirit of this renewal which reaches even the young the development of modern ceramic art. Marcello
Marcello Fantoni, who in the studios of the Porta Fantoni’s innovative experience places itself ideally,
Romana school has already brought to completion his from this point of view, in harmony with that of
first projects, where the influence exerted by the Galileo Chini,the courageous champion of the practice
experimentalism of the 1900’s is already decidedly of ceramics as an art form, who succeeded, not without
readable. In the scholastic sketches – many of which difficulty, in introducing, in Italy, the taste for Art
are conserved in the Uffizi’s Collection of Drawings nouveau, tearing down, in those first years of the 1900’s,
and Prints – produced by Fantoni towards the end of that barrier of old local formulae of which, our very
the Twenties, we may note a linear and synthetic young ceramicist, shows himself immediately to be a
planning character, conscious of a stylistic orientation passionate opponent.
profoundly permeated by the contemporary climate. Having gotten through those years of training, that
In the plates representing the “allegory of the months”, we can define as “experimental” since they see Fantoni
for example, dating from 1927, the rural subject ready to test himself with diverse expressive forms, but
inspired by the traditional repertoire of the Montelupo also searching for an exclusive stylistic orientation of his
Fiorentino manufacturers, is enriched by Fantoni with own, we come upon a new phase, in the middle of the
the evocation of elegant figures drawn with a crisp and Thirties, in a significant parallel to the opening of his
sure line, clearly influenced by Giò Ponti’s style, that are first workshop. Here, free from every type of constraint,
distributed gracefully on the Tuscan landscape in the felicitous condition of being able to fully unleash
background, primarily painted in blues and greens his expressive potential, he began to study new
(colours which, notably, the ancient ceramic tradition technical solutions, in the first place, for composition
did not pair up). These are decorative and stylistic and of combinations of certain glazes, in an attempt to
motifs which we will see reproposed , ten years or so create shaded, pictorial, and sumptuously iridescent
later, in the painted terracotta of Amerigo Menegatti effects on the surface of the vases.The modulation of
for the Cantagalli Factory. These years, in which the volume is rendered rough and discontinuous by a
aesthetic spirit anxious for modernity, already pushed porous, granular, materially consistent shell which
Fantoni to surpass definitively those results, proposing creates depressions on which the reflections of light and
new solutions. shadow play, in part due to the clay itself that Fantoni
But, to better understand how the avant-garde’s modelled his vases and sculptures with. It is the earth
vital thrust is inserted into Marcello Fantoni’s from Impruneta, strong, rough, irregular, the mother
vocabulary,from The beginning,we may examine again earth. It is the physical element to work with, to model
the sketch for the “Soccer Match Trophy”, where the to one’s own design, but, it is also an instrument of
figure of the player is taken apart by analytical cuts that knowledge, it is a metaphor, it is a mediating element
deconstruct the volume, and the project for “Small of primitive beauty.In function of it particular qualities,
Flower Vases”, in which the objects assume a sharp and it materialises the gesture, projects the forms, frees the
cutting physiognomy, studied in function of a flow of colour. It frees the destiny of every
decoration created exclusively by the segmentation of composition.
planes that dominate the surface. Pictorial arabesques, The pieces produced in Fantoni’s atelier now
mindful of the lessons of the first Futurists, shake, in the acquire that particular quality that will distinguish
first example, the classical form of the trophy, with the them, through the years, from every other production:
movement of the body that moves to conquer space: material and colour weave an undividable texture, and
the swift action of the soccer player who readies himself it is precisely with this choice to entrust the internal
to kick the ball, the composition’s pivot point, is architecture of the object to these two components that
rendered by the intersection of planes denoting the Fantoni signs unmistakable his production, avoiding to
trajectory, with the intersection of forms and colours obscure them with decorative and redundant academic
that weave a chromatic, luminous and vivacious forms.
structure. The structures of the forms are often built drawing
It appears evident, from theses first examples, how from the repertoire of the Etruscan production of
Marcello Fantoni was far from the stagnancy that vessels, but, by means of this intense flow of colour,
comes from revisiting stylistic formula of the past, from Fantoni succeeds in reinventing their aesthetic nature
1400’s to the beginning of the 1800’s, to which many and use, avoiding to become entangle in a quotation of
of the Italian ceramic manufacturers remained bound a self contained reference. To revitalize the classical,
despite the above mentioned solicitation to explore through the modelling of ceramics, is an investigation
modernity. This tendency, coming from the end of the into his historic roots: Fantoni’s artistic course is thus
XIX century, but still continuing into the years here determined, from the beginning, by the desire to
examined, on the one hand, supplied the tedious penetrate into the aesthetic ideals of the place of his
furnishings of the neo-renaissance bourgeois living origins, recovering the primordial forms and

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