Exhibit "NINO FERRARI. L'ARTE DEL METALLO TRA TRADIZIONE E MODERNITA' "
2/3/2024 - 22/9/2024 10:00 a.m.
Fondazione Ugo Da Como
Fondazione Ugo Da Como
The exhibition turns the spotlight on the extraordinary production of Nino Ferrari (Canneto sull'Oglio 1908 - Brescia 1981), a master of metalworking, chiselling and embossing on silver, copper and pewter, active in Brescia and Milan between the 1930s and the 1970s.
The works are exhibited in some of the rooms of the Casa del Podestà, the heart of the monumental complex, integrated into the permanent visitor's itinerary of the residence and enhanced through a display designed especially for the occasion.
Nino Ferrari and Gio Ponti
Nino Ferrari is one of the great interpreters of the new artistic taste that spread in the 1930s and 1940s, expressing himself not only in architecture, but also in objects made for the home. Picking up on the ancient Lombard tradition, he created creations that were always in dialogue between historical tradition and the most modern expressions of his contemporaneity, with an extraordinary ability to transform raw material in an artisanal way, through an exceptional knowledge of techniques and materials.
Nino Ferrari's modern style is related to the architect Gio Ponti, the most important Italian designer of the post-war period. Theirs was a very intense and fruitful relationship, testified by archive documents and works realised by Ferrari based on the architect's ideas. Their long collaboration took place between 1936 and 1952, years in which many of Ferrari's works appeared in 'Domus' magazine, a monthly magazine on the art of the home and garden founded and edited by Gio Ponti. It was precisely in 1936 that Gio Ponti set up the brand 'Casa e Giardino - Forniture utili e d'arte per la casa in città e in campagna' (House and Garden - Useful and Artful Supplies for the Home in Town and Countryside), with the aim of creating a collection of objects for the modern home, the result of collaboration between 'all the artists who create new models, all the industries and all the craftsmen'. Nino Ferrari is one of these and several of his works bear the 'Casa e Giardino' label, together with his signature.
Over 100 works on show
The exhibition begins with Ferrari's early years (1926), noting the close ties he developed with forms and decorations drawn from tradition and history, and then moves on to the definition of his characteristic 'ultra-modern style', to the fruitful collaborative relationships established with artists and designers of the calibre of Guido Frette, Gio Ponti and Roberto Sebastián Matta and his participation in national and international exhibitions.
The exhibition presents works from private collections and a number of important public institutions (including the Civic Collections of Castello Sforzesco in Milan) and presents for the first time to the public more than a hundred works including works in silver, copper, pewter and other metal alloys; drawings on paper and cardboard; plaster moulds, works in different stages of manufacture and working tools.
Fusi (an architect whose other works are unknown), which represents a unicum within Ferrari's repertoire for its irony and the playful spirit that animates the group of four elements; the set of small placeholders that seem to be influenced by certain creations proposed by Gio Ponti in the 1920s; the pewter vase-trough that reworks the shapes of the elliptical vases with conical feet of the 1950s, giving it an ironic animal-like appearance with the addition of a curved tail and a long neck ending in a crested head that acts as a spout: made in the 1970s, it could be the implementation of a design, which has not reached us, by the surrealist artist Roberto Sebastián Matta (with whom he collaborated, partly due to the fact that he had married his cousin Germana Ferrari) or a free interpretation by Ferrari of his cousin-in-law's style.
The investigations carried out on the occasion of the exhibition made it possible to recover, in a private collection, a copper vase exhibited in 1951 at the IX Triennale di Milano 'International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts and Modern Architecture', made by Nino Ferrari and designed by Gio Ponti.
The exhibition was realised thanks to a contribution from COSLAB | BIOCHIM.
The catalogue published by SKIRA is edited by Stefania Cretella.
Ticket price:
8 euros for the exhibition alone and the guided tour of the Casa del Podestà
10 euros for the visit of the entire Fondazione Ugo Da Como monumental complex (Rocca and Casa del Podestà)
The exhibition can be visited every day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The guided tour includes both the house museum and the exhibition, starts every hour and lasts 45 minutes, last entrance at 5 p.m.
Booking is recommended: 030 9130060 - prenotazioni@fondazioneugodacomo.it
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