Vase in “a pennellate” brush-stroke glass with applications in polychrome glass paste

The “a pennellate” brush-stroke series is one of Carlo Scarpa’s rarest and most famous produced in a very limited number of examples owing to both its difficulty in execution and the Second World War in progress at the time. The technique employed to embellish the surface was one of the most challenging and elaborate imaginable: polychrome applications applied to the surface of the vase in an irregular sequence that recalls a painter’s swirling brushstrokes of colour on canvas.

Scarpa’s days at Venini provided him with occasion for audacious experimentation and no little satisfaction. Close relationships with Paolo Venini and the master glassworkers enabled the artist to implement his most daring glasswork designs. During a lesson at lUAV Venice University of Architecture in 1976, Scarpa told his students that he was “born, perhaps, to do this and for this particular joy of being alive, seeing things, and enjoying it.”

Previously unpublished