Terra Incognita – Italy's Ceramic Revival
Estorick to Display Hockemeyer Collection of Modern Italian Ceramics
Aug 25, 2009
The Estorick Collection has recently been the setting for a number of excellent exhibitions including Futurism 100 and Workshop Missoni – Inspired by the Futurists.
A new exhibition planned for Autumn 2009, entitled Terra Incognita – Italy's Ceramic Revival, will feature 20th-century Italian ceramics from the Bernd and Eva Hockemeyer Collection. The Hockemeyers have established an impressive collection that ranges from antiquity to the present day, focusing on Italian Renaissance maiolica and glass. This wonderful resource, formed over the last 25 years, is considered to be one of the world's finest collections of modern Italian ceramic art.
Hockemeyer Collection – Shown in Britain for the First Time
The exhibition, which will appeal to ceramic and modern art enthusiasts, will feature fifty items from the Hockemeyer Collection, most of which have not previously been shown to a British audience.
Terra Incognita – Italy's Ceramic Revival will examine emerging styles and ideas prevailing in the period between the First and Second World Wars as well as the years after 1945.
Landmark sculptures, panels, vases and plates from the late 1920s to the mid-1980s will be on view. The display will include terracotta, maiolica and lustreware pieces by more than twenty Italian artists and ceramists including:
- Sculptors – Arturo Martini, Marino Marini, Lucio Fontana, Fausto Melotti, Leoncillo Leonardi and Giuseppe Spagnulo.
- Painters – Roberto Crippa, Gianni Dova and Emilio Scanavino.
- Ceramists – Pietro Melandri, Guido Gambone, Marcello Fantoni, Pompeo Pianezzola and Carlo Zauli.
Highlights of the Exhibition
Highlights of the exhibition will include a large-scale sculpture (116 x 68 x 38 cm) entitled San Sebastiano Bianco (White Saint Sebastian, 1962) by Leoncillo Leonardi (1915-1968).
Also featured in the display will be several pieces by Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) including Medusa and Concetto Spaziale (Spatial Concept, 1959). Concetto Spaziale is an example of the technique known as spazialismo which Fontana launched in his White Manifesto of 1946. The publication, which developed ideas from an earlier Italian movement, Futurism, established by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, stated:
"the free development of colour and form in real space to create an art that would transcend the area of the canvas to become an integral part of architecture.”
Terra Incognita – Italy's Ceramic Revival – The Catalogue
A 240-page catalogue, published in English, German and Italian, will accompany the exhibition and will explore the Hockemeyer Collection in depth. It will feature 115 colour illustrations accompanied by contributions from Dr Lisa Hockemeyer, leading art and design historian and curator of the exhibition, and Professor Gillo Dorfles, Professor of Aesthetics at the Universities of Trieste and Milan. (Hirmer Verlag, Hardback, ISBN 978 3 7774 2271 8.)
Terra Incognita – Italy's Ceramic Revival will be open from 30th September to 20th December 2009 at 39a Canonbury Square, London N1 2AN. Further information about both the exhibition, and the publication, can be obtained from the Estorick Collection.
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