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For more than two decades now, Giberto Arrivabene Valenti Gonzaga has been immersed in the world of glass, driven by a singular desire to reinvent tradition. In particular, he loves finding a connection between the expertise of Murano's master glassmakers and Art with a capital "A" — works created by great artists of the past that remain a constant source of inspiration for him. As with the Paolina Borghese, the bust of Caesar Augustus, the Sleeping Cupid… the impulse to create a glass object springs from the beauty of the art that surrounds him.

In the early months of 2017, Giberto Arrivabene was especially struck by the work of Lucio Fontana, above all by his Spatial Concepts — that idea of cutting into the canvas and moving "beyond" conventional space. He rediscovered this fascination during his frequent trips to Buenos Aires, where the artist lived and signed the Manifiesto Blanco. Back in Venice, Giberto began to consider the possibility of "cutting" glass as a tribute to the founder of Spatialism. Not without difficulty, the Fontana Vase was born: a large-scale vase engraved with one or more deep cuts that seem to slice ideally through the glass, revealing the color within — today produced in a limited series of fifteen pieces.

Despite its reputation as a "dead city," Venice is rich in opportunities tied to the contemporary art world: it boasts extraordinary museums and serves as the stage for the great Biennale. Giberto's dialogue with modern art continued, following his fascination with the work of Piero Manzoni and Alberto Burri — two artists quite different in their practice, yet equally compelling as sources for possible glass reinterpretations. Master glassmaker Gianni Seguso took up the challenge, creating the Manzoni Vase together with Giberto: a vase roughly thirty centimeters tall, blown in white glass and wrapped in a skein of filaments applied while still hot, achieving the effect of Manzoni's Achromes.

The exploration of Burri's work could only center on fire, the element that indissolubly links glass to the Umbrian artist's Combustions. Again with the invaluable collaboration of master Seguso, the Burri Vase was conceived: over a base of black glass, an intense red paste is fused. The vase is then covered with applications of crystal glass that recreate the effect of plastics melted by an oxyacetylene flame, highlighting the layering of chromatic planes.

These new vases, presented on the occasion of Glass Week 2019, are thus in keeping with the research Giberto has pursued for years: translating celebrated masterpieces of art history into glass — an approach that also offers a different way of looking at art itself, viewing it from a fresh and original perspective, as well as an open tribute to the millennia-old tradition of Murano glass, capable — when stimulated — of constant renew