Hans Stoltenberg Lerche (Düsseldorf 1867-Rome 1920)
Painter and sculptor devoted to applied art, Lerche, despite living abroad, has always
claimed his Norwegian nationality. After years of training in Paris where he made his
debut at the Salon as a portrait sculptor and as a ceramist, he settled in Rome in 1901.
From then on, he participated in all the most important art exhibitions held in Italy: he
was present in Turin in 1902, in Milan in 1906, in Venice at the Biennale in different years,
and in Rome at the annual exhibitions of the Amatori e Cultori di Belle Arti. He exhibited
sculptures in terracotta or bronze, plates and vases in porcelain or ceramic, jewels in gold
or silver and semi-precious stones, jugs, boxes, inkwells in pewter, silver or bronze. Artworks
that aroused the admiration of the public and the applause of critics intrigued by
the twisted and sinuous shapes of the metal objects, by the original combination of the
ceramic with-metal (that is, the application to the ceramic of bronze or silver trimmings,
edges, sockets, handles), and by the decorations: extravagant picturesque silhouettes
of crustaceans and insects or orchids and other flowers in the ceramics and disturbing
animals, spiders, scorpionfish, or mocking mythological figures, satyrs and fauns in the
metal artifacts. A free interpreter of Art Nouveau, Lerche combined the oddities of Nordic
sagas with the culture of classical Mediterranean mythology. A craftsman artist, he was
himself the executor of the objects he conceived. Always intent on experimenting, in 1911
he began a fertile collaboration with the Fratelli Toso furnace in Murano and created glass
vases, cups, and plates, operating a revolution toward modernity in both form and decoration.
At the height of his success and notoriety he died in 1920 crushed by Spanish fever.