Egidio Costantini Biography
Egidio Costantini was born in Brindisi on 22 April 1912. In 1945 he moved to Carnia, where he started a business in the wood trading sector and cultivated the idea of working with glass. Returning to Venice, he began working as a representative for some glass factories in Murano, thus having the opportunity to get to know the master glassmakers and their glass processing techniques. Wishing to bring glass art to the level of sculpture and painting, he conceived the idea of a collaboration between artists and master glassmakers to create glass sculptures based on the drawings of contemporary artists. He thus began working with a group of Venetian artists, from which the Centro Studio Pittori nell'Arte del Vetro di Murano was born in 1950. In 1954 he went to Paris to present his project to the major artists of the time. From here collaborations were born with Alexander Calder, Gino Severini and subsequently also with Pablo Picasso, Jean Arp, Max Ernst and others. After the dissolution of the Centro Studio in 1955, Costantini opened his own gallery in Venice, called the Fucina degli Angeli, which he had to close in 1958 despite initial success. The gallery reopened in 1961 with financial help from Peggy Guggenheim. In the 70s and 80s numerous exhibitions were organized in Italy and abroad. In 2000, an exhibition of Fucina's works was held in Tolmezzo, followed in 2003 by an exhibition in Innsbruck. Costantini died in Venice on 8 October 2007.
