Archimede Seguso

The greatest master glass maker of the XX century, from his creative genius wonderful glass artworks, also admired in many museums around the world, have taken shape.

Archimede Seguso was born in Murano on December 17, 1909. At the age of 11 he began working in the furnace and refined his skills by remaking eighteenth-century glass pieces.

In his early twenties he became an excellent Master glass maker, distinguishing himself also with the newly born heavy glass processing.

He hires first Vittorio Zecchin and then Flavio Poli as designers in the family factory “Seguso Vetri d’Arte”. From the 1930s he was invited to exhibit at the Venice Biennale, where, until 1972, the “Venice” Pavilion dedicated to Murano glass was located.

Among his main artworks, created in the first decades of activity, we can remember the Animals, for the beauty of which he is called “Master of Animals”, the figure of the boxer “Primo Carnera” of 1934, the portrait of the future wife of the 1937 and the thick “bullicante submerged glass” or “gold profuse”, “corroded” or “iridescent” such as “The zodiac” of 1935.

After leaving “Seguso Vetri d’Arte”, in 1946 Archimede founded the “Archimede Seguso Artistic Glass Factory”, thus obtaining full creative independence.

Collection

The “Dimanche Matin” or “Raggi” Collection of glass artworks represents a unicum in the Master's production; is characterized by the use of murrina, very rare in the Archimede Seguso glass works archives. The murrina is made up of rays of color, and it is precisely from this characteristic that the “second name” of the collection now exhibited in the Gallery derives.