Luciano Vistosi, sculptor
Rounded, sinuous sculptures without corners; shapes that attract attention with their changing play of light but also with their tactile qualities; works created by modelling the blown mass with quick, decisive gestures – balancing the hot glass as it slowly tends to descend due to gravity – giving shape to the creative idea in three minutes at most; or sculptures carved and polished as if the glass were marble.
These creations amaze with their poetry and innovation; sculptures in motion.
For the exhibition ‘Luciano Vistosi sculptor’, from 9 February to 30 May 2015 – the first temporary exhibition staged in the new Conterie spaces to mark the reopening of the Murano Glass Museum – 30 works have been selected by the great sculptor who passed away in 2010, a figure of absolute importance in Italian artistic research.
Only black and white works in glass, often etched.
It was in his father’s glassworks that Luciano Vistosi (Murano 1931 – 2010) learned to pull and lift the incandescent magma until it became a kite, a dove, rice weeders, a nude woman; or nightmares.
Upon his father’s death in 1952, together with his uncle Oreste and brother Gino, he founded the new Vetreria Vistosi with the aim of creating products linked to the latest research in the field of design. It involves some of the biggest names such as Aulenti, Sottsass, Magistretti, Zanuso, and Peduzzi; it focuses mainly on lighting, creating new products, including some famous lamp series. But his calling was sculpture
During his artistic career, Vistosi the ‘sculptor’ experimented with various techniques in addition to glass blowing.
Some works are carved from enormous rough blocks of glass – the “art of removal” typical of marble – obtained from industrial glass, as in the case of his famous design for the Accademia Bridge. It is the mid-1980s.
During the same period, the artist created houses and skyscrapers made of transparent glass, up to one metre in height. Sculptures and architectural works that seduce with their geometric perfection and underlying desire to pave the way for a more liveable city are exhibited alongside works in sea green and black glass in the artist’s studio in Murano, not far from the Glass Museum.
Some of Italy’s most significant photographers, such as Ugo Mulas, Gianni Berengo Gardin, Paolo Monti and Franco Fontana, have interpreted the innovative nature of Luciano Vistosi’s work through their images, a dialogue between sculpture and photography that was important to the artist, who himself used a camera in his search for lines, shapes and morphologies. Inspiration for new creations.
Gabriella Belli
Director of the Venice Civic Museums Foundation