Toni Zuccheri began designing glass for Venini in the 1960s. The son of a painter of animals, Zuccheri inherited his father’s love of nature and the natural world and he would go on to create vessels and sculptures unlike anything seen before. His elaborate glass birds, wildlife, and plant forms are recognized as high design, but his impact on Venini and on the world of glassmaking is perhaps underappreciated. Zuccheri’s devotion to nature was profound and his use of glass as a medium to express this connection seems to have broadened the potential of the material itself. His vases and sculptures perfectly express Zuccheri’s unique understanding of glass as a tool for sculpture— his chosen forms make the most of opacity, denying all of the usual properties of glass, save its plasticity. Zuccheri’s alluring tree trunk vases, with gold leaf and attached bronze bees, take glassmaking to new heights and exemplify the artist’s passion for nature above all else. In addition to Venini, Zuccheri would design decorative works and sculptures for Barovier & Toso, VeArt, and other esteemed firms.
Over the course of thirty years, the American collector Carl Bellavia devoted his attention to the glass produced on the island of Murano between 1900 and 1960 and in so doing came to understand the complex field of Italian glass. While initially focused on the work of Vittorio Zecchin for both Cappellin and Venini, Bellavia encountered and appreciated works by lesser-known designers and makers. We are pleased to revisit this collection (first featured in 2020) and celebrate the trove of pre-war glass along with stellar examples from the 1950s and beyond. With an eye for both beauty and quality, the Bellavia collection demonstrates the power of collecting with an open mind.
Toni Zuccheri 1937–2008
Born in 1936 in San Vito al Taglimento, Toni Zuccheri was the son of renowned Italian metaphysical painter Luigi Zuccheri whose work was focused predominantly on the depiction of fantastic animals and birds. From an early age Toni demonstrated an innate capacity for drawing and possessed a great sensitivity toward nature and animals, birds in particular.
A few years after moving to Venice with his family in 1945, he enrolled in the Academy of Architecture and studied under Franco Albini, Ignazio Gardella, Carlo Scarpa and others. In the early 1960s he began to study and work at Venini where, in collaboration with Gio Ponti, he engaged in intensive experimentation with glass; the culmination was the development of Vetro Grosso, a new type of glass created from dense vitreous pastes combined with murrine, raw pigment, shards of Filigrana canes and fine wire mesh.
Auction Results Toni Zuccheri
