Since the Middle Ages, Faenza has been a major ceramics center. The surrounding hills offer clay as a material suitable for ceramics production, and its location between the Po Valley and Tuscany places it at a crossroads of cultures. Very efficient coating techniques were developed to cover and decorate ceramics household products: glazing and engobe.
During the Renaissance, the decoration techniques were refined, reaching their peak during the 16th century, with the Faenza "Whites", with the ceramic works featuring a thick, white brilliant glaze.
Faenza is the City of Ceramics. Museums, exhibitions, experiences, workshops, art residencies, and major events enliven Faenza's cultural program.
To know
Faïence means majolica and thanks to its ancient artistic handicraft ceramic tradition, Faenza has become a UNESCO Creative City.
Events
Every two years Faenza hosts a renowned international ceramics event, with a rich programme of exhibitions and events.
Argillà Italia - International Ceramics festival and market-fair
The itinerary starts with a visit to the International Museum of Ceramics (MIC), one of the most important ceramic art museums in the world.
Founded in 1908 by Gaetano Ballardini, this institution has a heritage of over 60 thousand works of ancient and contemporary ceramics, coming from all over the world, alongside a rich section dedicated to Faenza Renaissance ceramics.
The MIC also hosts a library, photographic and documentary archives, a restoration laboratory, an educational laboratory "Playing with ceramics", founded by Bruno Munari; but it also organizes events related to artistic ceramics such as the Faenza Prize Biennial Competition and coordinates Argillà Italia, International Ceramics festival and market fair.
The journey into the world of ceramics continues inside the Carlo Zauli Museum, founded in 2002 in the historic laboratory of the artist from Faenza to whom the museum itself is dedicated.
The visit itinerary develops through the historic rooms of the studio-workshop: from the clay cellar, to the enamel room, from the kiln room to the large relief room where a lump of earth becomes a sculpture. The garden displays the monumental artworks realised by the artist in the 1980s.
In recent years, in addition to hosting the permanent collection, the museum has become a point of reference for the dissemination and production of contemporary art thanks to various avant-garde cultural projects.
The tour continues with a visit to the Guerrino Tramonti Museum, inside the house-workshop where the artist lived with his family from 1958 to 1992, the year of his death.
Initially a sculptor, Guerrino Tramonti soon also dedicated himself to ceramics and painting. The museum rooms significantly display this expressive variety, especially from a technical point of view.
In fact, around 390 works can be admired with an immense variety of shapes and colours, accompanied by a sublime expressive sensitivity.
Apart from a few pieces from commercial production, the collection consists in exquisitely artistic creations starting from the terracotta sculptures of the 1930s and 1940s, to the paintings of the artist’s Venetian period (1944-47), to his polychrome glazed ceramic works.
Continuing along the exhibition itinerary visitors can admire his works inspired by the materials and techniques of Chinese, Korean and Japanese ceramics, and the famous decorative discs, made with the thick glazing technique 'invented' by the artist in 1953, when he was directing the Castelli School of Art. At the end of the visit there are oil paintings, created by Tramonti between the end of the 1960s and 1992.
The visit is completed by the reconstruction of the artist's studio with his work tools and his last unfinished painting on his easel.
To know
Museo Tramonti is a museum of the National Museum System and of the Houses of Illustrious Personalities in Emilia-Romagna
Faenza confirms itself as a city rich in artistic treasures. Another place to visit is the Leandro Lega Museum. The spaces exhibit the works of the artist who passed away in 2002, as well as his historic workshop, an archive and a library.
Furthermore, conferences, exhibitions and meetings are organized as moments of study, reflection and dialogue to promote the knowledge of the name and figure of Leandro Lega.
Useful info
The Museum is open upon reservation.
The journey continues to the Riccardo Gatti Museum, inaugurated in 1998 in the historic premises of the factory, where it is possible to admire unique pieces from a retrospective collection of ceramic works created by Riccardo Gatti, starting from 1908.
The works offer a rich testimony to the collaborative relationships that the artist established with the Futurist movement, which he personally joined.
The first "reflection" works created between the end of the 1920s and the early 1930s are on display in the museum rooms.
For those who wish to experience the creative process first-hand, numerous workshops offer the experience for visitors, to shape clay with their own hands.
The historic center of Faenza is full of artisan ceramic workshops. There are around sixty of them located along the narrow alleys of the historic center and recognizable by an oval ceramic plaque placed outside.
Entering these places and getting to know the master ceramists is the best way to understand the traditional and modern techniques of manufacturing Faenza majolica. Here, you will have the opportunity to attend hands-on demonstrations and interact with artisans who preserve the savoir-faire passed down through generations, but also purchase authentic works of art directly from the artists.
