ANZOLO FUGA

June 02, 2016Evan Lobel

Anzolo Fuga, born in 1914, came from one of Murano’s oldest and most distinguished glassblowing lineages, dating back to the Middle Ages. Fuga attended the Istituto d’Arte di Venezia, a prestigious high school for the arts where the teachers were artists themselves and often experts in glassmaking. There he developed a serious interest in stained glass, which at the time was typically made using large sheets of homogenous glass. He used glass fragments, murrhines, and glass rods fused with lead, all worked hot, and sometimes engraved the panels with acid for added effect. In 1938 he started a new stained-glass department within the Istituto and went on to dedicate much of his life to the creation of stained-glass panels, each a work of art.