FEDERICA MARANGONI starts working in Venice as artist in the early ‘60s, when she was still a student at the Academy of Fine Arts, exhibiting at the Venice Foundation Bevilacqua La Masa at the annual group exhibition of selected young artists. Concentrating on the use of new materials for Art, she experiments polyester, Plexiglas and neon light, in the early ’70s she starts working in Murano with glass which will become her favourite material. Approaching than to video-art in the middle ’70s, she does video-performances and video-installations with the Centrovideoarte of Ferrara Italy. Her short movie in 16mm, The Box of Life, produced in 1979, will be invited at the MOMA in New York in 1980, for a screening evening together with the performance The Interrogation, a world premiere. In 1970 she opens, in Venice, the Fedra Studio Design, an activity which, by cultural and professional choice will juxtapose to her work as an artist, and will develop in an eclectic range of projects from corporate and graphic design to product design, to special projects for interiors as Restaurants and fairs stands. Glass as a material is an important part of her work since the early ’70s , when she begin to work in Murano both at her glass sculptures as well as designer for factories. A modular interlocking work of glass blocks, made with the Salviati factory of Murano is shown at the Venice Biennale Decorative Arts Pavilion in 1971 and again at the Biennale in 1995 at the Ca’ Pesaro Museum in the historic exhibition “Percorsi del gusto”, curator Marino Barovier. In 1971 architect Giò Ponti invites Marangoni to make a project for the main entrance of the Eurodomus in Turin: she designs a huge luminous shape on mirror base, composed of Plexiglas tubes linked together by a ring, a quotation of the well-known ‘Bricola’, the shape, made of poles, sign of the Venetian lagoon. The artwork will become a successful glass lamp; the beginning of Marangoni’s collaboration with well-known lighting industries. Federica Marangoni still continues to have a preferred relation with this media, in Murano as well as with Italian or foreigner glass factories producing artisanal handmade glass or industrial glass. She uses the media also in a conceptual way: its fragility becomes sign for her Art. She works with Tiffany throughout the ‘80s, as product designer for Murano clear glass objects, for the old Salviati Murano and the new Salviati, for Corning Glass NY, I-3 Salzano-Venice, Firme di Vetro, Christofle Paris, Bormioli , Fidenza Vetraria, Bisazza Mosaics. She designs large public sculptures using industrial glass with S.I.V. Società Italiana Vetro, and Bisazza , a large “Labyrinthine Fountain”, “The Trap of Memory”, a public work for the city of Seville, Expo 1992; she does with Pilkington a 3 meters large Book , “The Archive of Memory”(2006) in curved glass sheets, back projected, presented at Glas Tec Düsseldorf. Marangoni conceives a Glass Wall horizontally layered and breached at the centre with a raw red glass cascade centre and the words -No-More- in red neon ; with sponsor Troplast AG of Düsseldorf DE, she creates a 14 meters Rainbow in laminated glass of 7 colours, for the Venice Art Biennale in 1998. The rainbow is a symbolic element, which become an important presence in many of her works. Federica Marangoni designs two famous restaurants in New York and many booths for the international fair Abitare il Tempo of Verona, from the ‘80s up to the latest edition of 2007, in which she conceived and curated the exhibition Totem City, for the Berengo Glass Art Gallery of Venice. In parallel with her work as an artist, leading to shows all over the world, she continues to collaborate with companies in the fields of lighting and glass, creating objects for particular clients like San Pellegrino Waters, Nestlé.

SELECTED DESIGN AND GLASS WORKS SOLO EXHIBITIONS

1992

– Italian Institute of Culture, Montreal. “Prototypes of Lights and objects” presented by the Italian factories and producers.

1990

– Centro Domus Milan: “The Metaphor of the Object”, curated by P. Restany.

1988

– “Jardins Sentimentaux: Le Bois d’Alice”, Musée des Arts Décoratifs de la Ville de Lausanne CH.
– “Nature Under Glass”, Maja Behn Gallery, Zurich.

1987

– Galleria “Il Vicolo”, Genoa. Design Works.

1973

– Triennale Milan, collaboration price for the artwork: “5000 blue balloons on the Milan sky”.

1971

– Eurodomus, Turin, “La Bricola”, light installation for the main entrance hall.
– Il Sestante, art and design Gallery via Spiga Milan, works between art and design.
– Centro Domus Arte, Via Manzoni, Milan. Presentation of the edition 1/30 of the Murano glass lamp “La Bricola”.

SELECTED GROUP SHOWS, concerning glass and design

2021

Fittile, L’artigianato artistico italiano nella ceramica contemporanea, curated by Ugo La Pietra, Triennale Milano, catalogue

2016

W. Women in Italian Design, curated by Silvana Annichiarico at XXI Esposizione Internazionale della Triennale di Milano – 21st Century. Design After Design,
– Murano oggi – Emozioni di vetro, Museo del Vetro, Murano, Venice

2015

– De Gustibus, design collection of products for the table, a collaboration between Triennale Design Museum e Design Memorabilia (USA), for Milan Expo 2015 De Gustibus collection was exhibited in several locations and museums, including Centre Georges Pompidou Paris, MoMA New York, Department store La Rinascente Milan.

2011

– Abitami, Milan fair for the decor and design lab, in the section “A room for one’s own”.
– Federica Marangoni was invited to the architecture and design special event of INTERNI magazine , at the Universita’ Statale, Fuorisalone Milano in 2013/2014.

2008

– Abitare il Tempo International Fair, Exhibition of Murano glass art: “TOTEMCITY”, by Berengo Studio, Verona Italy.

2007

– “Viva Vetro! Glass alive! – Venice and America”, Carnagie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, USA.

2004

– ME DESIGN – le forme del Mediterraneo/Mediterranean Shapes, curated by University of Architecture & Design of Genoa, Italy.
– “Glass in the World Today”, Venice, Palazzo Franchetti.

2001

– “Carnevaldesign”, Viareggio-Italy.

2000

– “Carnevaldesign”, Viareggio-Italy.

1999

– “La Tradizione Rinnovata: Vetro di Murano” (Tradition renewed: Murano glass), Verona Trade Fair, Verona.
– “Carnevaldesign”, Viareggio-Italy.

1998

– “Aperto Vetro”, Palazzo Ducale, Venice.

1995

– “Percorsi del Gusto”(The ways of taste), La Biennale di Venezia, Ca’ Pesaro, Venice (glass artwork, 1970).
– “L’Art du Verre à Murano au XXème siècle”, Passage de Retz, Paris.
– “Identità e Differenza. Libri d’artiste” (Identity and Alterity.Women Artist Books), Scuola Internazionale della Grafica, Venice.
– “I Muri Crollano” (Crumbling Walls), Galleria Colombari, Milan.
– “La Sindrome di Leonardo” (The Leonardo syndrom), Palazzina di caccia di Stupinigi, Turin and Museo Diocesano, Barcelona.
– “Abitare Il Tempo. Genius Loci: Padova, Luminose seduzioni” (Shining seductions); Città di Verona, show “Le tavole di VR” (Verona tables), Verona Trade Fair, Verona.

1994

– “Abitare Il Tempo – Oggetto e Società” (Object and Society). Marangoni is invited to work on the theme “La stanza del regista” (The movie director room).
– “Art & Tabac”, curated by P. Restany, Palazzo del Turismo, Riccione.
– E.A.M., Kassel and Monica Borgward Gallery, Brema, “Glass-Licht-Kunst”.

1993

– “Art & Tabac”, curated by P. Restany, Galleria Eos, Milan.

1992

– “Contemporary Glass Sculptures of European, American, Canadian and Australian Artists”, Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Lausanne.
– “Design Balneare”, Ex colonia Le Navi, Cattolica Italy.

1990

– “Creativitalia”, Tokyo.
– “Il Design delle Donne”, Ravenna.

1989

– “Il Design delle Donne”, Ferrara.

1988

– “Abitare Il Tempo – Genius Loci”, Marangoni exhibits the project “L’albero della Laguna” (Lagoon Tree).

1987

– “Donodesign”, Galleria Venice Design, Venice.

1986

– “Verre au Feminin en Europe”, Nadir Gallery, Annecy and Transparence Gallery, Brussels.
– “Art and Design/Italy”, Seibu Gallery, Tokyo.

1982

– “Artader 82”, Barcelona.

1981

– Glass Art Society Exhibition, New York.
– “New Glass”, Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris; The Fine Arts Museum, San Francisco; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
– “Il Vetro di Murano Oggi”(Contemporary Murano Glass), Palazzo Grassi Venice.

1971

– Venice Biennale – Venice Pavilion of Decorative Arts.