03 - Liceo Mengaroni

With the Museum of Artistic Ceramics, the Mengaroni art school has organized a collection of the ceramics present in the school, in particular the works of students of the ceramics section created in the decade 1950-1960.

The choice is significant because it emphasizes a part of the tradition of artistic research in Pesaro different from that linked to the revival, but instead protagonist of the most modern experimentation.

By hosting the collection, it also underlines the fundamental role it has had in the training of the youngest ceramists, welcoming the most well-known masters into the teaching staff.

It also underlines the organizational role played by the city of Pesaro in the Italian cultural context. In fact, in the 20th century Pesaro was the site of the first three national ceramic exhibitions. The first, in 1924, was born with a Decree of the President of the Council of Ministers that authorized the municipal administration to promote the first National Exhibition of Ceramics and the second Regional Exhibition of Pure and Decorative Art. The curator was the Superintendent prof. Luigi Serra and was held at the former Istituto Tecnico Bramante. In that year, again in Pesaro, the 1st National Congress of ceramists also took place.

The second National Exhibition was held in 1928 and welcomed many more exhibitors than the first edition, with prestigious ceramists from all over Italy. Pesaro participated with important workshops and artists such as Ceramiche della Ditta Giuliani, Mengaroni A.M. & C, Maioliche Ciccoli, Wildi-Del Monte, Ditta Molaroni, Giancarlo Polidori, Francesco Carnevali, Sandro Gallucci, Francesco Mariotti.

The third edition in 1952 compared traditional styles with the latest trends in ceramics, placing Pesaro and its school as protagonists of renewal. The Exhibition, promoted by the Chamber of Commerce, which boasted in the various committees names of great fame such as Giò Ponti, Gaetano Ballardini, Giuseppe Brega, Giorgio Ugolini, hosted among the exhibitors, the modern ceramics made by the students of the Mengaroni School.

With the CAME collection therefore, Mengaroni artistic ceramics, a place with a high symbolic value has opened, because it is an exhibition space within a place that has always been a training space for enthusiasts and future artists.