Venice, October 2025 – The exhibition on Lucio Fontana’s ceramics curated by Sharon Heckerart historian, set up in the exhibition spaces of Peggy Guggenheim Collection fromOctober 11th 2025 to March 22026.
After greeting the numerous journalists and guests present, the director Karole PB Vail underlined the importance of this tribute to Lucio Fontanaamong the most innovative and irreverent artists of the 20th century. “This is the first exhibition
museum entirely dedicated to the ceramic production of Lucio Fontana”, stated Vail, continuing: “As the title itself suggests, through a surprising variety of works, around seventy, the exhibition offers a new in-depth analysis on the artist’s vital relationship with clay, a material that accompanied his creative path throughout his life. Already in 2006 the museum paid homage to the artist with the exhibition Lucio Fontana. Venice/New Yorkcurated by Luca Massimo Barbero. Today we return to host a monographic dedicated to Fontana, but which explores an absolutely lesser-known side of him, namely his relationship with ceramics”.
“This exhibition reveals a more intimate and tactile side of Fontanaborn from a deep and lasting bond with a humble material such as clay, a side that goes beyond the iconic and heroic figure known for his bold cuts and gestures”, continued curator Hecker. “By retracing the artist’s direct approach to ceramics, the exhibition restores to this medium the role it deserves alongside marble and bronze, recognizing their expressive strength and artistic value. It celebrates not only Fontana’s relationship with the rituals of working with clay, but also the extraordinary potential of this material as instrument Of experimentation and of freedom 
creative. I hope that the exhibition will surprise the public and offer a new perspective on an artist withinexhaustible capacity for innovation“.
With approx seventy workssome of which have never been exhibited before, coming from well-known public and private collections, the exhibition intends to shed light on the scope of Fontana’s sculptural vision through a material such as clay, revealing how it has represented, over the years, a rich and productive ground for experimentation. His ceramic production stands out for the variety of forms, techniques and subjects: from the works figurative that they represent women, marine animals, harlequins And warriorsuntil abstract sculptureshis approach to clay recovers the ancient rituals imposed by the material, on which he intervenes
innovative ways. His ceramic practice developed over decades and in very different contexts: from his first period in Argentina to his return to Italy at the time of Fascism, followed by a further long stay in Argentina during the war and a new return, after the war, to the Italy of reconstruction and the economic boom. Fontana also created objects for private interiors, come on dishes to the crucifixes, fireplaces And handlesoften in collaboration with important designers. With renowned Milanese architects he created ceramic friezes for building facades and sculptures for churches, schools, cinemas, hotels, sports clubs and tombs which still adorn the city today. On display there are both unique handmade pieces and mass-produced objects, some of which blur the boundaries between the two categories.
The exhibition retraces Fontana’s ceramic production, touching two continents and four crucial decades, and intertwining chronology and sculptural themes in a new and dynamic story. His protean production ranges from figurative sculptures to radically abstract forms, a reflection of the different historical, social, political and geographical contexts in which Fontana lived and worked. The exhibition itinerary starts from a work created upon his return to Argentina in 1926, Charleston dancerafter the trauma of the First World War fought as a young man 
together with the other “kids of ’99”. From here we continue in the Italy of the fascist period, where, in the early thirties, the artist created small intimate terracottas, unglazed and with light touches of colour, such as Portrait of a little girl (1931) or Female bust (1931), to then arrive at the season of extraordinary experiments with enamels, made possible thanks to the collaboration with the artisans of Albisola. Fascinating works such as belong to this period Crocodile (1936-37), Jellyfish (1938-39), Sitting woman (1938) and the majestic Italian Torso (1938). During the Second World War Fontana returned to Argentina again, where he continued to work in ceramics, before returning once again to post-war Italy. Here, the reconstruction of the country and the economic boom intertwined with its expanding ceramic production, starting a fruitful dialogue with the world of design. Fontana realizes dishes, crucified, abstract shapesall works that investigate the very origins of the ancient practice of ceramics. A room is then dedicated to the most personal portraits of the women female figures who were part of his life, testimony to the intimate relationship that Fontana had with the women he portrayed – from his wife Teresita Rasinito the writer and intellectual Milena Milanithe only woman signatory of the Spatialism Manifesto, to the ceramist Esa Mazzotti – how much with matter. The exhibition highlights the material strength of clay, smooth, rough, engraved, raw, painted, enamelled, cut, holeand Fontana’s innovative ability to intertwine the languages ofart and of thecraftsmanshipdel design and of manual skill. There’s no shortage of them archive photographs which portray Fontana at work, evidence of a collaborative artist, deeply in tune with materials, processes, people and places.
To accompany the exhibition, an unpublished short film, Lucio Fontana’s ceramics in Milan, specially commissioned and created by the Argentine director Felipe Sanguinetti. Conceived as an integral part of the exhibition itinerary, the film takes the public on a cinematic journey through different places in the city of Milan, from Monumental Cemetery toGonzaga Institute, Prada Foundation, Villa Borsani, Church of San Fedele, Diocesan Museumto tell the story of the ceramic works that Fontana creates thanks to the collaboration with important Italian architects, including Osvaldo Borsani, Roberto Menghi, Mario Righini, Marco Zanuso. All site-specific interventions, integrated into the architectural and urban fabric of the city, which could not be physically transported to the museum rooms, but which come to life thanks to the powerful and fascinating images of this film, which can be enjoyed in the spaces in front of the exhibition.
Mani-Fattura: the ceramics of Lucio Fontana invites the public to reconsider Fontana not only as a pioneer of Spatialism and conceptual art, but as sculptora artist deeply linked to the materialpay attention to tactile and expressive potential of clay. The exhibition also aims to raise new historical, material and technical questions about his ceramic practice, which a critic of the time defined as his “other half” and “second soul”. In contrast to the established image of Fontana as a hypermasculine and heroic figure who cuts his canvases with a cutterthe exhibition reveals a more informal, profound and collaborative side of the artist, rooted in the soft physicality of clay and shaped by lasting relationships, such as that with the ceramist and poet Tullio d’Albisola and the Mazzotti di Albisola ceramic factory. As the curator states: “Clay emerges as a container of vital experimentation, multiplicity and fertility”.
The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue, published by Marsilio Artwhich includes new critical essays all dedicated to Fontana’s ceramic practice and its historical, social and cultural contexts.
Carlo Franza