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Design: Auction No. 091C - 21.09.2010

Bruno Gambone (Vietri sul Mare, 1936)

Being the son of one of the most famous Italian ceramic artists of the 1950s, Guido Gambone, Bruno was being taught his craft in his father’s workshop in Florence. Zealous to learn and get in contact with new influences he also worked together with other workshops and widened his horizon in engaging in the manufacture of jewellery and textile as well as working in Fine Arts. He seized the opportunity and travelled to New York where he stayed between 1963 and 1968. Having concentrated on the Fine Arts he soon made the aquaintance of Pop Artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg. Back in Milan, he met Lucio Fontana and Gianni Colombo who both inspired him. After his father’s passing away in 1969, Bruno opened his own shop in Florence that exists until today.

Bruno Gambone’s work distinguishes itself through very clear shapes, almost exclusively produced in stoneware. He focuses less on unique pieces, rather on special decorative objects, attractive vases and sculptures that he then puts into serial production. He prefers low-keyed colours and uses them only sparingly most of the time. A good example is a vase with a flat, round body and a longish, funnel-shaped neck, with chapped, earth-coloured glazing, the only decoration on the front and back incised horizontal lines that were coloured in shades of brown. There are, however, from time to time small unique pieces, like the humourous self portrait Gambone made in the 1990s: a moon-face with a vertical line as nose, below that his prominent moustache.

 

 

Faridah Younès M.A.