Pioneering American glassblower Dante Marioni burst onto the international glass scene aged 19 when he took the glass world by storm with his exacting and intuitive command of both Venetian design and technique. At the age of 23, he had his first sell-out gallery show in Seattle with a series that introduced his signature monumental forms and two-colour style, earning him a prestigious Louis Comfort Tiffany Fellowship.
Marioni trained in Venetian glassblowing techniques with some of the greatest masters in contemporary glass and continues to push the limits of his craft. His elongated and sinuous pieces, which evoke the rich tradition of classical Mediterranean pottery and bronzes, display innovative and complex cane patterns on exquisitely crafted forms. Through it Marioni draws our attention to his extraordinary use of skill and elegance, hallmarks that de ne his oeuvre.
Though a celebrated art form in America, Marioni has rarely exhibited in the UK and as the leading Reticello glass artist in the world and we are delighted to invite him back to Messums Wiltshire to show his latest body of work.
Dante Marioni’s signature style has been described as the purest of classical forms executed in glass by an American glassblower. His amphoras, vases, and ewers are derived from Greek and Etruscan prototypes, yet they are imaginatively and sometimes whimsically reinterpreted.
The son of American studio glass pioneer Paul Marioni, Dante Marioni was raised in a family of artists that includes two well-known uncles, painter Joseph Marioni and conceptual artist Tom Marioni. Marioni first held a blowpipe at the age of nine. By the time he was 15, he was working after school at one of the first cooperative hotshops and showrooms, The Glass Eye, in Seattle Washington.
After two decades of experimentation, Marioni now creates a diverse range of tall, iconic forms with surface treatments such as murrine (mosaic) and reticello (air bubbles within a net pattern) in an ever-changing array of vibrant colours.
Marioni’s work is in public collections worldwide including the V&A, London; New Zealand National Museum, Auckland; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; National Museum of Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden; Japanese National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan; American Museum of Art and Design, New York.
