Carlo Scarpa – Artists & Designer

Biography

Carlo Scarpa, born in Venice in 1906, came to the glass arts via detours. The Venetian by birth first studied architecture at the Accademia di Belle Arti in 1919 and gained his first experience as an architect in Vincenzo Rinaldo's office. In 1925 he received the order from Giacomo Cappellin, who had just separated from Paolo Venini, to build the medieval Palazzo da Mula for the new company residence of M.V.M. Rebuild Cappellin & C. The personal contact to the Milanese antiques dealer seems to have sparked the young architect's interest in glass art. In the following years, Scarpa not only designed the Cappellin shops in Florence and Paris, he was also responsible for the new models at the Biennials with great success.

When Cappellin had to file for bankruptcy in 1932, Carlo Scarpa immediately found employment with Paolo Venini, who made him the company's artistic director in 1934. While in the previous years most of his designs were rejected, it was now turned around. Scarpa conformed all his designs to the aesthetic ideas of the boss and also convinced important clients to give them their business, such as the rector of the University of Padua, who in 1943 commissioned a table decoration of ten symbolic figures with Venini’s company after thorough examination of the competing Muranese companies.

In 1947 Carlo Scarpa set up his own business to advance his parallel career as an architect. In Venice he had already renovated the Department of Economics in Ca 'Foscari, the Teatro Rossini, the Galleria dell' Accademia and the Museo Correr. In the early 1930s, the interior designer designed the houses of the Venetian gallery owner Feruccio Asta and the living room of the glass engraver Franz Pelzel. Cafes and shop furnishings, like those of "Olivetti" (1957) in Venice, were also set up according to his ideas.

Scarpa was one of the avant-garde cross-border commuters who began to oscillate between design and architecture in the 1930s. He acquired special expertise as a designer of exhibition architecture. His first presentations included the "Oreficeria veneziana" exhibition at the Loggetta del Sansovino in Venice. After leaving Venini, Scarpa created major exhibitions such as "Giovanni Bellini" (1949), "Images of work in contemporary painting" (1950), "Giambattista Tiepolo" (1951), "Toulouse-Lautrec" (1952), "Antonella da Messina "in Messina (1953), the conversion of the medieval Scaliger Castle Castelvecchio in Verona into an art museum (1956-1964)," Frank Lloyd Wright "in Milan (1969) and the glass exhibition in Verona “Vetri di Murano dal 1890-1960”, to name just a few.

As professor of interior architecture and rector of the Istituto Superiore di Architettura between 1962 and 1978, Scarpa shaped architects and designers as well as his son Tobia Scarpa, who later also worked for Venini. Carlo Scarpa created new glass designs in 1952 for S.A.L.I.R. and 1961 he worked for Venini again.

One of Scarpa’s most famous architectural designs is the tomb for the Brion industrial family in Trevigiano in northern Italy. On an L-shaped plot of land of around 2200 square meters next to the small cemetery of San Vito d 'Altivole, he designed five buildings that connect Moorish, Egyptian, European and Japanese styles that he had encountered on his trip to Japan in 1969. "I think this work is good," said Scarpa, who died in Japan in 1978 when it was completed, "and it will get better over time. I tried to achieve a poetic idea, not to create poetic architecture, but to create a kind of architecture that can convey the meaning of formal poetry".