Fabrizia Oval Bowl

The oval cup Fabrizia depicts, against a backdrop of a deep blue sky, a nude female figure reclining on clouds, with bent knees and intertwined hands. It belongs to the family of decorations called by Gio Ponti Le Mie Donne, designed to adorn hand-painted maiolica art objects. Slender figures suspended on clouds already appear at the center of some plates presented at the 1923 Biennale of Monza, but it is the following year that the decoration was developed and finalized for a series of large ornamental plates. 

The rim of each plate is decorated with a pattern of quadrangular balusters framing the protagonist, identified by a pose and an architectural motif of classical influence.  The name assigned to each woman further helps to characterize the figure.  Ponti, through the simplification of outlines and the invention of airy and uninhibited poses, renews motifs of art and Mannerist aesthetics with an ironic twist. 

Between late 1924 and 1925, the decoration was extended from plates to round and oval cups - where however architectural views are absent - and to some vases. In 1925 the series was presented at the Paris exhibition and the second Biennale of Monza.