Page 18 - MARCELLO FANTONI

Art and Life Journeys in the Memories of Marcello Fantoni

Today, that his commitment as an inexhaustible beginning.
st
creator of forms has been fully recognized, Marcello Marcello Fantoni was born in Florence in the 1 of
Fantoni contemplates and re-reads the whole of his October, 1915, to Renato Fantoni and Beatrice Corsi
production, works, and testimony of an entire life Bartolini, in an apartment on Via Benedetta, a tiny cross
dedicated to art. There are more than seventy years of street of Via della Scala.The first of three children, he
vases, sculptures, medals, drawings and sketches: the lived with his parents and his grandfather in a large
hands of Fantoni have modeled over the years hundreds house that also housed five other families. His father, an
of creations, today gathered in the vast and silent rooms insurance agent at the Riunione Adriatica di Sicurtà
of his home-atelier on Via Monterinaldi where he agency, worked a second job to make ends meet typing
continues to work and teach with energy and medical texts, at night after work, for the local
perseverance. newspaper “La Nazione”. His mother worked as a
From this by now tangible esteem, which the furrier, a trade that she learned from one of her
critics and the public alike have declared, Fantoni may husband’s aunts who was like a mother to her. Fantoni
look back serenely and retrace the stages of the life and often remembers the hardships of those years and the
history of a man who, with an enterprising and sacrifices that his parents made to raise their family:
intuitive spirit,from the moment he finished art school, working late into the night, doing without, and the
embarked upon the path that would bring him, by mortification that, above all, his mother suffered
means of his ceramics, into the collections of the working - mainly - for the wealthy and titled
world’s most prestigious museums. Fantoni does this Florentine ladies. He remembers a time, when still a
without hesitation, without false regrets, fully aware of small boy, that he saw his mother discouraged and
his own worth, and at the same time, he is convinced saddened after having been humiliated at work. He
that he is not yet at the end of his artistic journey nor promised her that one day he would send a car and
life. Ideas and forms are still growing within him today, driver to take her anywhere she would like to go, and
and even for an artist such as he who has received that he would cover the bed with “bank notes”.
among the most important acknowledgements, art Fantoni assures us, with a slight smile, that, although at
continues to be intuition, fantasy, vision. the time he was powerless in the face of their economic
What we propose here is to revisit, together with situation, to which he certainly couldn’t have
the Master and the memories that he wishes to share contributed, he did indeed fulfill his proud boyhood
with us, the fundamental stages of his life and to look promise, as soon as he obtained a prosperous economic
into the depths of his story so as to understand what position thanks to his work.
road brought him to these successes and what people Nevertheless, he comments on those years with
spurred,loved,and helped him in his work.We propose, great nostalgia: the serene family environment, the love
as well, a sort of participation in the suffering that which bound his parents, and above all his mother’s
afflicted him during the years of the war, so as to share strength. She was a tenacious and energetic woman
in his arduous and enduring artistic commitment who used all of her abilities so that her children would
which was instrumental in the renewing of ceramic art feel as little as possible the weight of the hardships of
in the twentieth century. This will better help us enter that time. This had a great influence on the
into the intimate sphere of his creative process and to development of young Marcello’s personality. He
better see the relationship which exists between his himself doesn’t hesitate to admit that what pushed him,
whimsical but authoritative character and his art, so through the years, to continue in the face of inevitable
studied and intentional, which has always been aware of difficulty was precisely his mother’s example: her
and interested in new languages while remaining, by its untiring endeavor, moving step by step, to better her
very nature, separate form every identifiable artistic family’s condition. Her desire to fully feel as mother of
trend. He has a personality,while completely distrustful her family, in fact, motivated her to move with her
of any theory, which constantly renews its knowledge husband and children to an apartment on Via
using external stimuli that he then bends to suit what Palazzuolo in the beginning of the 1920’s. Fantoni still
his inspiration demands. He is a man who lives in full recalls his father’s hesitancy concerning such a move
awareness of his era, permeable to the cultural tensions ( the fear was, above all, that the economic strain might
in the European debate, but who succeeded in placing threaten the tranquility that they had arrived at after so
his own experience, in the complex Italian artistic much effort) countered by his mother’s tenaciousness
panorama from the 1930’s to today, in a position and courage which finally persuaded his father.
definitely outside of all conventions, with results often Although, she herself was unaware of the degree of
unpredictable and often not understood, at least at the work that awaited her in exchange for the pleasure and

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