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reproposing the markings in a solution oriented sculpture are to be noted: the subjects represented, the
definitively toward modernity. attention to a softness of the modelling and the solid
In order to understand how these components tectonic imposition on the composition reveal a
materialize into Fantoni’s linguistic units, we must plurality of influences, that have a sweeping range from
consider the red vase, created in 1938, preserved in the the popular spirit of the Etruscan statuary to the
“Hall of the Majolica” in the Bargello Museum, courtly Florentine Renaissance, and continuing to the
(among many possible examples which came out of the stylistic synthesis of Libero Andreotti, which he
artist’s atelier in the years between the third and fourth absorbed in his first deductions in the class rooms of the
decade, traceable to the same thematic roots), which Porta Romana Institute. It isn’t a comparison that
reveals in its structure an explicit reference to the Fantoni lived passively, but it was rather a starting point
amphoras of Etruscan origin, but is enriched by a from which to gather up a fertile potential of linguistic
chromatic dressing of a dense, crusty membrane, upon reserves already in his possession, and to fully express
which the reddish brown glaze rings out. his ingrained need to work the ceramics with an
Those are the forms which,from a very young age, entirely artistic spirit, carrying out his research on
he studied in the Archaeological Museum of Florence, plastic themes integrating the production of vases with
and in his hands of Tuscan “race”, excellent and that of a strictly sculptural practice.
intuitive custodians of a centuries-old wealth, they Testimony of this can be found – to cite only a few
finally found a renewed power capable of stylistically examples- in the works of the Reclining female nude,of
tying them to the contemporary. It is a revealing of the 1939, in the International Ceramic Museum in Faenza,
value of the ancient, intimately felt, that goes well the Bust of the Unknown, of 1942, and also the beautiful
beyond cultural theorems and intellectual Saint John the Baptist,which is a work that Fantoni faced
complications: the search for the essence of the form, with an ostentatious display of a notable technical
the balance of the drawn texture, the love for the virtuosity united with a intentional narrative synthesis
plasticity of the earth, are, for Fantoni, therefore, the of the study of XV century Florentine sculpture.
never formalized prerequisites for beginning a fresh, Furthermore, it is possible to read in theses works a
formal process, free from a superficial vague resonance of the debate introduced in the twenty
mythologicalization and classical rhetorical visions. years preceding the magazine “Plastic Values”, in a
We must then talk about an Etruria, elected as a general climate still tied to a Rappel à l’ordre , that is
visionary source, prolific in models, a stating point for nevertheless traceable to Fantoni more for his formal
the critical processes, that the artist translates into results than for a concrete sharing of theoretic
expressive, impulsive, visceral possibilities, evocative of assumptions.
the Tuscan-ness that Marino Marini considered, It is, quite simply, the understanding that the
precisely, “the architecture of ourselves”: the tendencies coming inevitably out of his personal
indispensable starting point and the artistic experience experience cannot be set aside, and it is the same
reclaimed that is bound to an historical ethic, upon restricting and intense bond that he has with “his”
which we can graft the invention of every child of a figurative tradition which determines, in this period,
plastic culture. the basic stylistic choices. We must underscore,
The ties with the Etruscan culture, that catalyse, in moreover, that the formal process in making his first
this phase, Fantoni’s attention, are fundamental, because attempts at sculpture may be interpreted ( as we have
they will become a structural element in his fictile been able to point out for his production of vases) as a
production, even in coming years. The inspiration cognizant act, an indispensable premise for the
drawn from the archaic world takes to form, over the untangling of the completely new linguistic and formal
years, through images developed in innumerable knot, that this most important moment in his creative
varieties, but, it is always identifiable, thanks to, above season, which spans from the Fifties up to the present,
all, the unmistakable chromatic scale, to the indelible has consigned to us .
freshness of the execution of an ornamental dictate that If it is true that the years of the war dramatically
establishes, through the morphology of the models, a slow and distort Marcello Fantoni’s workshop
relationship that is exclusively eurhythmic. production, they also mark an important change in his
Fantoni’s ceramics, exhibited on the occasions of personality ( and consequently, also in his vision of art)
the Florentine Handicraft Shows, the Milan Triennials which is evident in the series of sculptures that are
and the Awards in Faenza, are met with the agreement centred around the themes of battle victims and
of the public and critics that immediately grasp how imprisonment.
such a new idea of the decorative object can be Fantoni was not intending, in his analysis, to
separated from its mere decorative function in order to present a realistic narration of the events lived:
become an authentic artistic expression. following the workings of his own imaginative paths,
Nonetheless, during the years between the fourth his testimony unfolds itself in a symbolic analogism, in
and fifth decade of the century, his first attempts at a timeless dimension, where pain becomes

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