VENICE.- From October 11 through March 2, 2026, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection presents Manu-Facture: The Ceramics of Lucio of Fontana, the first museum exhibition dedicated exclusively to the ceramic work of Lucio Fontana (1899–1968), one of the most innovative, and in his unique way irreverent, artists of the twentieth century. While Fontana is best known for his iconic, slashed and punctured canvases of the 1950s and ‘60s, this exhibition casts a spotlight on a lesser known but essential part of his oeuvre: his work in clay, which he began in Argentina in the 1920s and continued to explore throughout his life. Organized by art historian Sharon Hecker, this is the first solo show to offer an in-depth examination of Fontana’s ceramic production. As Hecker notes: “Long associated with craft rather than fine art, today Fontana’s ceramics are receiving attention due to the resurgence of interest in the medium within contemporary art.”
Through over seventy works, including several never previously exhibited, on loan from renowned public and private collections, the show seeks to illuminate the full scope of Fontana’s sculptural vision in clay, revealing how over the years he regarded it as a rich, generative site of experimentation. Fontana’s ceramic output is notable for its diversity of forms, techniques, and subject matter: from figurative sculptures of women, sea creatures, harlequins, and warriors to abstract forms, his approach to clay recaptured the age-old ritual of ceramic-making combined with experimentation. His ceramic practice unfolded across several decades and different contexts: from his early work in Argentina to his return to Fascist Italy, to another long stay in Argentina, and again in Italy after World War II during reconstruction and the later economic boom. Fontana also made objects for private interiors, from plates to crucifixes, fireplaces, and doorhandles, often in collaboration with leading designers. Working with prominent Milanese architects, he created ceramic friezes for building facades and sculptures for churches, schools, cinemas, hotels, sports clubs, and tombs that still adorn the city today. The selection of works on view features both unique handmade works and serially produced objects, some of which blur the boundaries between the two categories. Archival photographs capture Fontana at work, highlighting the artist’s emphasis on the role of the hands in the creation of his ceramics and the intimate relationship he established with the medium.
Manu-Facture: The Ceramics of Lucio Fontana invites visitors to reconsider Fontana not only as a pioneer of Spazialismo and Conceptual Art but also as a materially engaged artist deeply attuned to the tactile and expressive potential of clay. The exhibition also raises new historical, material, and technical questions about Fontana’s ceramic practice, which one early critic defined as the artist’s “other half” and “second soul.” In contrast to the prevailing, familiar image of Fontana as a lone, hypermasculine, heroic figure violently slashing his canvases, the exhibition reveals a more informal, intimate, collaborative side of the artist—rooted in clay’s soft physicality and shaped by enduring relationships, such as the one with the ceramist and poet Tullio d’Albisola and the Mazzotti ceramic workshop in Albisola. As Hecker puts it, “clay emerges as a vessel for life-affirming experimentation, multiplicity, and generativity.”
A fully illustrated catalog, published by Marsilio Arte, features essays by curator Hecker, as well as Raffaele Bedarida, Luca Bochicchio, Elena Dellapiana, Aja Martin, Paolo Scrivano, and Yasuko Tsuchikane, all dedicated to Fontana’s ceramic practice and its historical, social, and cultural contexts.
A rich program of free collateral events also accompanies the show, exploring and interpreting the artist’s practice and visual idiom, organized with the support of Fondazione Araldi Guinetti, Vaduz.
