Lucio Fontana's Ceramics Take Center Stage at Peggy Guggenheim Collection

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice presents 'Mani-Fattura. Le ceramiche di Lucio Fontana', the first museum exhibition dedicated to the Argentine-Italian artist's ceramic works, on view from October 2025. Curated by art historian Sharon Hecker, the show features 70 pieces, some exhibited for the first time, drawn from over 2,000 ceramic sculptures Fontana created from the 1920s until his death in 1968. The exhibition highlights Fontana's lesser-known clay works, ranging from the delicate 'Ritratto di bambina' (1931) to the monumental 'Ceramica spaziale' (1953), and includes figurative subjects like women, sea creatures, harlequins, and warriors, as well as abstractions. Fontana began working with clay in Argentina in the 1920s and continued throughout his life. His 'first ceramic' (actually plaster), 'Ballerina di Charleston' (1926), painted black to imitate ceramic, captures the syncopated rhythm of jazz. The show also includes terracotta reliefs from the early 1930s, still lifes like 'Banana e pera' (1938) with surprising colored enamels, and a series of 'Crocifissi' from the late 1940s-1950s that repeat a cross shape but vary the image of Christ. A politically charged piece, 'Torso italico' (1938), reinterprets the statue of Emperor Augustus with fascist symbols, but its broken arm and barren tree suggest ambiguity. The exhibition runs at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.