Arturo Martini: Magia della ceramica: le terrecotte e le maioliche della collezione Costantino Barile

This exhibition reveals forty unseen artworks by Arturo Martini (Treviso, 1889-1947) from the prestigious art collection of Constantino Barile (Albisola 1886 – 1968 a studious historian and lawyer) who knew the artist personally. Preceding the likes of Lucio Fontana, Arturo Martini’s sculptural creations present an engagement with the historical traditions from the region of Liguria, and an attempt to renew the Ligurian artistic language. The exhibition offers a rare opportunity to view a myriad of terracotta ceramics by Arturo Martini of excellent provenance, which Constantino Barile displayed in his private home alongside traditional blue pottery from the region of Liguria.

The works displayed in this exhibition depict the artist’s creative imagination during the 1920s, Martini’s large sculptures in plaster are both daring and delicate, executed with great agility showing the marks of a storyteller who tested the limits and possibilities of ceramic making. As a creative narrator, Martini worked outside any rigid system of order, he was an experimental artist stimulated by the tactile and colorful potential of clay, an inventor of the unknown.