Fausto Melotti

Pasticceria Motta (pastry shop), via Roma, Naples, Italy

Private collection, Italy

The ceramics were specifically commissioned to Fausto Melotti for the decoration of the Pasticceria Motta (pastry shop) in via Roma in Naples by the architect Melchiorre Bega, who had been designing several Motta shops, including those in Milan.

This work is registered in the Fondazione Fausto Melotti, Milan, under the no. D_9.

'The particularly heavy bombing of World War II hit hard not only Melotti, destroying his studio, but also the entire city of Milan.

As a consequence it became necessary to immediately begin the reconstruction of housing and city services, thus involving many architects. It was at this juncture that Melotti found himself working alongside various artists, contributing with his ceramics to complete the interior furnishings of new stores. [...]

The friendship with Melchiorre Bega born as a result of the architect's designation as editor of the magazine "Domus," and a well-founded mutual esteem, brought Melotti to work alongside him in several occasions in his own work. Bega had already been a "trusted" architect of the Motta firm for many years and through the modern and and functional designs of various stores of the famous Milanese firm in Italy, he offered Melotti space for his coloristic and material inspiration.

[…] in 1948, Melotti clad the tall pillar inside the Neapolitan Motta's pastry shop designed by architect Bega. Melotti used square and rectangular plates on the surfaces of which four or two relief elements were carved with plastic motifs found in Alitalia offices. The peculiarity of these elements is that at irregular intervals they reveal the "heraldic" motif of Motta's capital "M". '

Donatella Lodico, La collaborazione con gli architetti dagli anni quaranta agli anni sessanta, in Fausto Melotti. L’opera in ceramica by Antonella Commellato and Marta Melotti

'... The most enchanting [problem]... is to be able to bring the feast of colors into the house like a pleasant carpet. The author says that the real problem is not to invent a beautiful tile, but to invent a beautiful floor and that is to make a tile that will bear its multiplication by a hundred and a thousand.'

Fausto Melotti, presentation for an exhibition in Germany, circa 1964