Fulvio Bianconi at Venini Curated by Marino Barovier 13 September 2015 — 10 January 2016

With over 300 works, the exhibition “Fulvio Bianconi at Venini” aims to give a comprehensive description of the fruitful and long-lasting collaboration between the artist and the famous Murano glassware company. Fulvio Bianconi (Padua, 1915 – Milan, 1996) arrived in Murano in 1946 to design perfume bottles for the company Giviemme. He then began his collaboration with the Venini glassware company, which would continue until the mid Fifties and episodically during the Sixties, and then again between the end of the Eighties and the early Nineties. During all those years Bianconi and Paolo Venini established a fruitful relationship, based on mutual respect and enthusiasm, which led Bianconi to have a strong influence on the production of the glassware company. Bianconi focussed on pieces with sophisticated shapes, characterized by strong colours, designing striking works, some of which sum up the enthusiasm of the “fabulous” Fifties, and later became true icons of Murano glassmaking.

Thanks to the unprecedented documentation from the Venini Archive and to the collaboration with private collectors, as well as with Italian and foreign museums, the exhibition “Fulvio Bianconi at Venini” features the complete glass production designed by Bianconi for the Venini glassware company. Many of these works were acclaimed at the Venice Biennale and at the Milan Triennale, as well as at other travelling exhibitions in Europe and the USA during the Fifties, and reveal Bianconi’s extraordinary curiosity and innovative skills, his interest in the use of strong colours as well as his ironic and playful creative nature.