Nino Strada Biography
Nino Strada (1904 - 1968) was a painter, designer and ceramist. He attended the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, and later the Albertina Academy in Turin; he is a student of Leonardo Dudreville. From 1925, in Albisola, he became the favorite pupil of the master potter Giuseppe Mazzotti. Among the first exhibitions, the participation with Tullio d'Albisola in the III Biennale of Decorative Arts in Monza in 1925. Among the other important exhibitions in which he was among the protagonists, we remember the Futurist Art Exhibition at the Palazzo dell'Esposizione Permanent of Chiavari in 1931; the exhibition New Italian ceramics at the Hotel Montparnasse in Paris in 1932; Les aeropeintres futuristes italiens at the Hotel Negresco in Nice in 1934. Again with Tullio d'Albisola he took part in the V and VI edition of the Milan Triennale; the two then exhibited a ceramic panel in the Italian Pavilion of the 1937 Paris International Exhibition. Among their solo exhibitions, noteworthy was the 1929 exhibition at the Pesaro Gallery in Milan. He also manages ceramic factories in Deruta, Albisola Capo, Vicenza and Milan. Although he works in close contact with Tullio d'Albisola, his activity remains rather distant from Futurism, which never sees him fully involved; instead it declines towards twentieth-century suggestions, which became complete towards the end of the 1930s, borrowing stylization features from Casorati and Martini and achieving, in any case, results of notable modernity. In ceramics, his favorite subjects are animals, which he renders in agile and stylized plastic forms.
