212: DINO MARTENS, Geltrude vase, model 5299 < Important Italian Glass, 11 December 2020 < Auctions

Important Italian Glass

11 December 2020

Important Italian Glass

212

Dino Martens
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Geltrude vase, model 5299

Aureliano Toso
Italy, 1954
internally decorated polychrome patchwork glass with copper inclusions, pinwheel and filigrana 12 h × 7½ dia in (30 × 19 cm)

estimate: $30,000–40,000

result: $62,500

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provenance: Fifty/50 Gallery, New York | Private Collection, New York
literature: Art Glass from Murano: 1910-1970, Heiremans, cover, pg. 201 illustrates this example Dino Martens: Muranese Glass Designer, Heiremans, pg. 166 illustrates model

There are several known versions of Dino Martens’s Geltrude vase, but none are more famous than this example as it appeared on the cover of Marc Heiremans’s book, Art Glass From Murano, in 1993. At the time, the vase was in the collection of the famed Fifty/50 Gallery in New York City. Since then it has resided in an important private collection in New York.

Dino Martens 1894–1970

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Born in Venice in 1894, Dino Martens studied painting and design at the Accademia di Belle Art in Rome. A talented artist, his paintings were exhibited at the Venice Biennale between 1924 and 1930. In the mid-1920s, Martens was a partner and decorator for S.A.L.I.R. and later took a position as designer for Salviati & Co. In 1939, upon returning from the African War, Martens became artistic director for the famed glass firm, Aureliano Toso.

Martens' work for Aureliano Toso has become legendary for its inventiveness, experimentation and excess. His innovative use of oversized murrines, brightly colored metallic powders and fragments of glass rods, all expressed in wildly biomorphic forms, have become synonymous with Murano glass style of the 1950s.

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