Alessio Tasca

Works

Attend the studio of the painter and ceramist Giovanni Petucco and the local art school, which specialised in ceramics. His predisposition for drawing and the encouragement of the ceramist Romano Carotti convinced his family to let him continue his studies: for the occasion Carotti gave him a copy of Matteo Marangoni's book "Saper vedere" (Knowing how to see), a fundamental text for the young Tasca's education. He thus enrolled at the Venice Art Institute and was able to assimilate the stimuli of a city that was then very culturally combative: the memory of Arturo Martini's recent lesson is still vivid, while the signs of new trends, such as the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti and Spatialism, are maturing. On 24 October 1948, together with his brothers Marco and Flavio, he set up the Tasca Artigiani Ceramisti workshop in Via Mulini 6, and began to prepare a series of models inspired by the Novese tradition. The commercial failure of these typologies pushed the young Alessio to prepare a cycle of "modern" ceramics to be addressed to a different market, more attentive to the post-war needs of renewal: thus the first plates decorated with "graffito" on a green or brown background, in various decorations, were born. In 1949 he took part in the first exhibition of his career at the 5th Italian Exhibition of Sacred Art at the Angelicum in Milan, where he exhibited an Annunciation in terracotta which, through the lesson of Petucco, went directly back to the sources of Martini's plastic art. In 1951 his participation in the Milan Triennale with the "earthy" and engraved plates, chosen by Gio Ponti on one of his frequent trips to Nove, was a great success; the particularity of Tasca's production was appreciated by the Milanese gallery owner Totti who acquired the works for his gallery. In 1952 he participated for the first time at the Venice Biennale in the "Venezia" Pavilion for decorative arts, with "vases and plates". In 1954 he took part in the Venice Biennale with a 'Table in majolica' and two 'Trays with figures' in 'Morelli green'. In 1957 Tasca married Elva Pianezzola, with whom he had three children: Marina and Vittore, ceramists, and Saverio, a musician. He left the "Fratelli Tasca" workshop in October 1961 and opened his own atelier in Via Roberti, designed by Gaspare Parolin, who was still a student of architecture, where he devoted himself first of all to the moulding of a cycle of large one-off pieces, thus returning to sculpture proper. He returned to teaching in 1962, succeeding Giovanni Petucco in the chair of Plastic Art at the Istituto d'Arte di Nove, where he remained until 1978 and where he formed a group of friends and colleagues - Pianezzola, Sartori, Chemello, Tubini, Sebellin - who gave life to the renewal of content and teaching. At the 1964 Venice Biennale, again in the Decorative Arts section, he was awarded the first prize (ex aequo with Pompeo Pianezzola) for ceramics. At the Gubbio Biennial in 1966 he was awarded the first prize in the crafts section for his large majolica shield in 'lobster red'. In 1967, with the advice of the Novese technician Ettore Leoni for the mechanical part, he developed the first die, a machine that allowed him to design and obtain the first rectangular-section works by extrusion. He exhibited them for the first time in Treviso on 4 January 1968 at the "Studio d'Arte Arturo Martini". The same year he took part in the XIV Triennale in Milan with 17 extruded pieces, including the cornovaso, perhaps the most representative "form" of this cycle. The Triennale was occupied as part of the protest "demonstrations" of 1968; Tasca concretely adhered, destroying all the works that should have been exhibited. In 1972, the Victoria and Albert Museum bought a Cornovaso, which is still kept and exhibited in the Decorative Arts section of the London museum. The international jury of the XV Triennale in Milan, where he exhibited ceramics and plexiglass, awarded him the Gold Medal Diploma for the methacrylate production made by the Fusina workshop in Nove based on one of his designs. In 1974 he extruded his first large-scale sculptures: the "Sfere" (Spheres) cycle was born, obtained from a cylinder extruded on a grid matrix. His artistic contribution thus returned definitively to sculpture proper.   At the 1978 International Ceramics Symposium in Bassano, he met the German ceramist Lee Babel, with whom he established a human and artistic partnership that would lead to frequent exhibitions in Germany and local events in Rivarotta, Fara Vicentino and Heilbronn. The following year, he left the management of the workshop at Villa Roberti and moved to Rivarotta (on the border between Nove and Bassano) in the seventeenth-century building, which had already housed historic ceramic kilns. He began to restore the important artefact, now reduced to ruins, in a solitary work that lasted ten years. In 1980, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London bought the coffee service produced entirely in 1974. In the same year a group exhibition of the group of ceramists was held at the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, curated by Romano Perusini. In 1982 the great art historian Giulio Carlo Argan visited the Rivarotta premises accompanied by the director of the Museo Civico di Bassano Fernando Rigon. In 1986 he perfected a large vertical die in order to extrude large works; during a pause in the restoration work on the Rivarotta building, he produced a new cycle of stoneware and refractory sculptures which he exhibited in Heilbroon and Marostica, inaugurating a new phase in his work centred on the expressive value of "ruin" and drift. In 1989, under the historical supervision of Nadir Stringa, he organised an exhibition of ten years of restoration work and finds at Rivarotta, inaugurated by a public speech by the writer Luigi Meneghello - Rivarotta - which was printed by the publisher Moretti & Vitali. In 1991 he was commissioned by the Municipality of Nove to carry out a "decoration" for the wall that runs along the south side of the area of the former Antonibon factory (later Barettoni) to replace the one he had carried out in 1956 with coloured mortar and which was now worn out. In 1993 he built a small brick amphitheatre on the Fara hill. In 1995 a reflection on the further "narrative" possibilities of the extruded panels, resulting from the work for the Antonibon wall, led Tasca to carry out a "revisitation" of the great cycle of frescoed months in the interiors of Torre Aquila, in Trento.
 

TERRE LIBERATE
MONTERONI (SI)
From 14/05/1993 to 23/05/1993
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