Sculptor, painter and poet: the art of multifaceted Fausto Melotti – a great master of mid-century European Modernism – playfully juxtaposes irony and lightness with academic and intellectual rigor. Features that should be familiar to horsemen as fundamental characteristics of equestrianism in all its forms, too.
Indeed there is a match: Fausto Melotti’s poetic ceramics refigure ancestral landscapes populated by witches, giants, lions, giraffes, and, of course, horses. Better said a little horse, il cavallino. The love story between Melotti and the horse began in 1929, when he started his 20-year-long collaboration at Richard-Ginori’s ceramic furnace to realize numerous pieces in collaboration with its then-artistic director and Melotti’s life-long friend Gio Ponti.
To Melotti “Sculpture is a representation in space that tends to render every aspect of reality, even the hidden, secret, invisible ones”. Fausto Melotti’s art is based on the hidden and intimate side of things: the moment Melotti entered his studio he was not really sure about what he would get. He was open to interpretation, to adapt to the very moment and make the best out of it.
Isn’t it the same approach we should have every time we mount our beloved horses?
