Arrigo Visani (1914-1987) works at the “Cooperativa Ceramica d’Imola” (C.C.I.) from June 1946 to January 1951. During the first year he attends Giorgio Morandi’s drawing and engraving lessons at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, resumed after the war parenthesis. In the Artistic Section of C.C.I. he creates “ex novo” a varied series of bottles: among them the ones known as Imola’s “living” or “animated” bottles. In these latter he conveys, with the poetical sensitivity and the technical mastery widely recognized to him, a personal and precocious interpretation of his teacher’s psicology of art and the suggestions stemming from his extraordinary formal lesson. The current statutory anonymity of C.C.I. has unfortunately favoured a certain arbitrariness of attribution of this kind of ceramics, both in literature and in various art shows dedicated to that period. This article intends to restore Visani’s full artistic authorship.
