Nanni Valentini Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Nanni Valentini (1932 - 1985) is one of the most singular and vivid personalities of post-World War II artistic research. Valentini's journey began in 1956 when, at just twenty-four years old, he won the prize at the Concorso Nazione della Ceramica in Faenza (which he later won again in 1961 and 1977) and with that, won in 1958, at the Everson Museum of Fine Arts in Syracuse (New York). Read the full biography

Nanni Valentini (1932 - 1985) is one of the most singular and vivid personalities of post-World War II artistic research. Valentini's journey began in 1956 when, at just twenty-four years old, he won the prize at the Concorso Nazione della Ceramica in Faenza (which he later won again in 1961 and 1977) and with that, won in 1958, at the Everson Museum of Fine Arts in Syracuse (New York). The friendship with Fontana, Tancredi, Sottsass, Scanavino and the brothers Giò and Arnaldo Pomodoro, a strong propensity for the study of the most disparate areas of knowledge and the immersion in the Milanese environment of the sixties, rapidly developed his poetics starting from ceramics, towards a fundamental reasoning on plastic form and image. In the seventies works such as Landscapes of clay and Garze interpret his desire to reinterpret the earth as the possibility of infinite landscapes and realities, and no longer as a simple medium. Hence the development of his profound and very rich artistic poetics made of clods, landscapes, bricks, veils, faces and houses. In the crucial decade, 1975-1985, Valentini was recognized as one of the greatest living ceramic sculptors; in 1976 he established himself on the Milanese scene with a memorable solo show of paintings (the Trasparenze) and sculptures at Carla Pellegrini's Galleria Milano. In 1982 he had a personal room at the 40th Venice Biennale and was in “La sovereign inattualità” at the Museum des XX. Jahrhunderts of Vienna. In 1984 he had a large solo exhibition at the Pavilion of Contemporary Art (PAC) in Milan where he presented Deriva, Annunciation, Il Dialogue (his Cratere enters the permanent collections of the Civic Museum of Contemporary Art in Milan at the Palazzo Reale) and then exhibited at Museu de Ceràmica in Barcelona, ​​but on 5 December 1985 he died suddenly. His works have also been exhibited and are present in many public and private collections, including the Museo del Novecento in Milan, the Civic Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Varese, the Everson Museum of Fine Arts in Syracuse, the Arnaldo Foundation Pomodoro in Milan, the Museu de Ceràmica in Barcelona, ​​the Hetjens Museum in Dusseldorf, the Frakfurter Kunstverein, the GAM in Turin, the Galleria Civica in Modena, the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Faenza.