Fantoni Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Marcello Fantoni was born in Florence on 1 October 1915. His career began very early: at just 12 years old. Read the full biography

Fantoni Biography

Marcello Fantoni was born in Florence on 1 October 1915. His career began very early: at just 12 years old. At that age, in fact, Fantoni began to attend the courses of the ceramist Carlo Guerrini at the Porta Romana Art Institute in Florence. At the same time he took sculpture lessons from Libero Andreotti and Bruno Innocenti and drawing lessons from Gianni Vagnetti. In 1934 Fantoni graduated as "Master of Art" at the same Art Institute of Porta Romana. In 1936, inside the stables of Villa Fabbricotti (unfortunately completely destroyed during the bombings of the Second World War), Fantoni started the Manifattura Ceramiche Fantoni. Already on the occasion of the Florence Crafts Exhibition in 1937, his production established itself as one of the most current trends and achieved great success also from a commercial point of view. Between the end of the 1940s and the end of the 1950s, the company reached a staff of more than fifty collaborators, including lathes and decorators. Between 1950 and 1970 Fantoni's works, influenced by the Etruscan world, as well as modern art and Cubism, achieved international success. A success demonstrated by the fact that his works have entered private collections and the most important museums around the world: in the United States at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, at the Brooklyn Museum, at the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, in New Hampshire in Manchester at the Currier Museum of Art, at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse. In the United Kingdom, at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, at the Art City Gallery in Manchester, at the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh. In Japan, at the Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto (MoMAK) and at the Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. In Italy, at the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza (MIC), at the Bargello National Museum and at the Cabinet of Drawings and Prints of the Uffizi.