MARCELLO FANTONI NEOCLASSICAL TABLE LAMP

A voluptuous and very early table lamp, with a classical décor, by Marcello Fantoni, “the master of beauty.” It embodies the tension, typical of Fantoni’s work, between the dual legacies of ancient and traditional Italian pottery and an arch conformance to the ideals of the Modernist and progressive movements. MARCELLO FANTONI (1915-2011) was born in Florence in 1915. He began his studies at the Instituto d’Arte Porta Romana in Florence at the age of twelve under the great ceramicist Carlo Guerrini, then the creative director of the famed Cantagalli Factory. Fantoni’s training in the arts included sculpture classes with Libero Andreotti and Bruno Innocenti and instruction in figure drawing with the painter Gianni Vagnetti; he finally graduated from the institute as a maestro in 1934. Upon completing a stint as the art director of a ceramics factory in Perugia, he opened the Fantoni Ceramic Studio in Florence in 1936 where he produced both serial and one-of-a-kind pieces, the latter in