Paolo Venini and his Furnace

The autumn exhibition at Le Stanze del Vetro will be dedicated to Paolo Venini, enlightened and creative entrepreneur.

Milanese by birth and Muranese by choice, Paolo Venini (1895-1959) was a great protagonist of twentieth century glass, and made a decisive contribution to keeping it alive with his enthusiastic works over the course of forty years. In his important role as cultured, enlightened and creative entrepreneur, Paolo Venini will be the focus of the autumn exhibition at Le Stanze del Vetro: Paolo Venini and his Furnace, curated by Marino Barovier, will run on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore from 11thSeptember 2016 to 8th January 2017. Through 300 works the exhibition will feature the creations of Paolo Venini and some of the artists who collaborated with him in the period following World War II.

After his first collaboration with Giacomo Cappellin at the V.S.M. Cappellin Venini & C. (1921-1925), Paolo Venini founded the V.S.M. Venini & C. glassworks together with Napoleone Martinuzzi and Francesco Zecchin in 1925. He later became Chairman of the company and worked tirelessly as guiding mentor and manager of the firm until his death in 1959. In the course of forty years of business he collaborated with great artists such as the sculptor Napoleone Martinuzzi, the architects Tomaso Buzzi and Carlo Scarpa, and the designer Fulvio Bianconi to whom Le Stanze del Vetro have already dedicated solo exhibitions. But Paolo Venini, a skilled businessman attentive to both contemporary artistic trends and the needs of the international market, was also the creator of a new series of glass, using his own technical department and contributing to the list of glass works that still featured the intervention of several designers.

Thanks to careful research, the exhibition Paolo Venini and his furnace, along with its catalogue, show the company production, which was shaped by the specific choices made by Paolo Venini, leading, for example, to series such as the Diamante (Diamond) crystal glass in the second half of the Thirties. It was however, in the1950s that Venini devoted himself assiduously to the creation of new glass to great acclaim at the Milan Triennale and the Venice Biennale, but also in the international events for the support and promotion of Italian design and craftsmanship that were held both in Europe and the United States.

Several glass works by Paolo Venini were conceived from a refined and innovative reinterpretation of some of the traditional Murano techniques, such as the zanfirico of which there were some variants proposed mostly between 1950 and 1954. For example the elegant zanfirici (1950-51) in white or polychrome glass, the elaborate zanfirici a reticello (1954) in monochrome and sometimes richly coloured, together with the mosaico zanfirico (1954) decorated with a white lace-like pattern that stands out against the coloured surface. And then the great effectachieved by the mosaico tessuto multicolore (1954), characterised by a novel interplay of multi-coloured glass threads in delicate shades.

Around 1953 there was a revival of the murrine technique that progressively led to research into types of glass patterns, mostly opaque, (‘a dame’, ‘mezzaluna’, ‘a puntini’) executed with striking colour combinations. Reflecting the influence of Nordic design, the production was then orientated towards delicate monochromes assembled with glazes or grinding of the surface made when cold, leading to the important series of incisi glass (1956-57). In the same period, the multi-coloured series of bottles and the colourful stained glass shown at the 1957 Triennale were also hugely successful, standing out for their remarkable decorative effect.

The role of Paolo Venini and his extraordinary personality will be at the centre of the exhibition Paolo Venini and his Furnace, but, at the same time, it will also feature the creations of those who collaborated with him episodically between the thirties and fifties, called in by Venini or having arrived themselves due to their interest in the quality of his furnace’s work. The collaboration with the Swedish ceramicist Tyra Lundgren (1897-1979) dates back to the mid-thirties, in addition to some vases, Lundgren proposed a rich bestiary of winged animals, fish, snakes and different leaves of various shapes; whereas the post-war period saw imaginative bottles, table services and lamps designed by architect Gio Ponti (1891-1979).

In the second half of the twentieth century, the designer Piero Fornasetti (1913-1988) to whom an original table service is owed, and the Russian painter Eugène Berman (1899-1972) who created the centrepiece, Ruins, in clear glass, collaborated with the furnace. The American Ken Scott (1918-1989) designed a colourful series of stylised fish in opaque glass for the great American store Macy’s, while Charles Lin Tissot (1904-1994), also American, introduced original interpretations of the zanfirico technique.

A small but successful series of glass characterised by a strip of murine, owed to the experimentation of the painter Riccardo Licata (1929-2014), was shown at the Biennale of 1956. In the mid-fifties architects Massimo Vignelli (1931-2014) and Tobia Scarpa (1935) also contributed to the life of the Venini glassworks: the first, between 1954 and 1958, dedicated himself to lighting and tableware, the second, between 1959 and 1962, used his creativity in designing, among other things, a new series of murrine and wheel-engraved glass. Contact with the Nordic countries, finally led Paolo Venini to a brief collaboration, interrupted by his death, with the Norwegian designer Grete Prytz (1917-2010), who created some jewellery in glass and silver (1958-59).