Artisti italiani e spagnoli a Murano nel XXI secolo

Abstract

My article focuses on some Italian and Spanish visual artists who have created their art pieces in Murano glassworks. Most of these artists approached glass for the first time, others already had experience. The techniques and quality of the glass used differ according to each artist's project: blown glass, borosilicate glass, industrial glass, casting, lost wax and others. The works taken into consideration are all recent and belong to the years 2010 to 2022. These artists are: Marcela Cernadas, Francesco Gennari, Federica Marangoni, Javier Pérez, Silvano Rubino, Bernardí Roig. A common thread unites the artists considered so far. Glass has been used by them within a conceptual, installation or even sculptural project, exempt from the need for beauty, and rooted rather in the non-visible part, in process and thought, which are nevertheless fundamental. It is different in the case of the decorative arts, in particular, where the aesthetic aspect and technical mastery for the realisation are privileged, often aided by the valuable contribution of particularly enlightened designers and glass masters. A field, Studio Glass, however, that is more similar to the decorative arts, since it is essentially based on form, and therefore more related to the modernist creative philosophy. However, on this last aspect, the debate is open to even very conflicting assessments, i.e.: to what extent is glass an equivalent material to those that have always been used in visual art and no longer relegated to the applied arts? This is a topic of debate that also involves the future of the collections of decorative arts museums and glass museums.