Bellissimo Gallery is saddened to announce the passing of Luciano Nicheto, friend, artist, and believer in the qualities of his art as an illuminator of life.

Luciano Nichetto was born in Murano (Venice) on the 5th of June, 1935.

He was predestined. He was born as such in that unique place in the world where the meaning of the noun "Glass" is absolute, where the creation of ethereal masterpieces is practically joined with that magical materials born of a sandy mixture, that when passed through the purification of the fire becomes a "pure spirit."

At the age of 10, he was already in the glassworks, (at the disposition of the older Muranese workers) beginning as an errand boy "garzone," that long apprenticeship which can last more that a decade and will bring to the most talented the coveted position of first-class "Glass Master."

Luciano Nichetto, as a young boy, followed the customary path and in thee glassworks "SEGUSO Glass works of Art" (SEGUSO Vetri d'Arte) they saw him follow, with passion and dedication, the Old Masters in their work, thus realizing his long-time dream, the dream of all the Muranese boys who were his contemporaries. At the age of 19, he became a "Glass Master," continuing his work in that prestigious glassworks of Murano for over 20 years, realizing innumerable "pieces" valued in the best tradition of "Venetian glass."

The use of the adjective "Venetian," historically speaking, is obligatory, in such that the glassworks, in the workings of objects of glass for formal as well as everyday use, were born in the area of the Realtino islands, and it was that "Rivoalto" which had to give way to that unnatural, unique, marvelous city which is VENICE. We must not forget, however, that most probably, the trade was already developing in protohistoric times in the legendary TORCELLO.

It is only since 1281, however, that artistic glass art has found itself limited to the island of Murano, although very probably it had already been spontaneously relocated there in order to avoid the s courge of fire that in those times often struck the Venetian buildings.

Luciano Nichetto was moved from the sense of active research, who in the Glass had always seen a component of his very existence, to begin work in another glassworks and didicate himself to the creation of "Artistic Sculptures." this was almost an epic passage for Nichetto, born a blower with respect to the glass tradition, yet found himself working glass "blocks" to markets and collectors, in a natural evolution of a changing world. In all this, Nichetto saw, in a future assimilate and use, in order to make himself more evolved and perpared.

And it is this natural curiosity, for everything that is new in his work, which brought him to move to Venezuela, in South America in 1977, and to get a job in the capacity of "Master" in the glassworks "ICET ARTE MURANO" owned by the AVA's, with his natural propensity to know and to make known.

And as it happened for many of his ancestors in centuries past, it is of great honor to him to show people from far-away lnads the skill of whom glass in inscribed in one's own DNA, an almost divine predisposition which brought the Muranese to excel worldwide in this impossible art, to showthose who never have known the heat of the furnaces from a tender age.

The company with whom he worked, with his works, won numerous prizes in Artistic Expositions, including the US.

But after 7 years of residence in Venezuela, he felt nostalgic and decided to return to his beloved Murano, where he quickly gave life to customized artistic accomplishments.

By now aware of his skill and sufficient experience, he began his own business, giving life to a production of artistic objects, using innovative technology, and often coupling other noble and not so noble materials to the glass, (copper, bronze, and brass.) In a continuous researchof chromatic emotions, he alternated decorations in silver and gold with results that were often exciting. He put to the test unique techniques such as textiled glass and submerged glass. It was in this way that the stupendous series of vases, dishes, and lamps, in whose transparencies the chromatic reflections of our lagoon seem to float, was born. Red sunsets, golden dawns, Marine seaweed, and blue skies establish themselves to give life to a phanasmagoria of colors at once tenuous, at once aggressive, always sublime in their purity.

It seems as if Nichetto, like many of his predecessors, had the ability to imprison the light and that this confined luminosity, in its turn, shaped the mass in which it found itself living. There is in all this a sort of symbiosis with Venice, with its impartial character, a connection between the material used, solid yet bodiless and the city, with its contrasts and its dazzling lights. In the revelations of reflected glass objects we find all of the culture and civilization of this enchanting millenary trade which, according to human rules, should have never existed.

The idealization of a dream of beauty only to then make it come true in a thousand luminescent flashes, is the legacy of but a few. The Muranese Glass Masters belong to this "Elite," and their shkill in transforming "primordial dust" into pure visual poetry, thus exalting the creation, renders them unique among men.

Today Luciano Nichetto is a man who can boast of his many satisfactions and upon looking back, has no remorse for the physical and moral sacrifices he made in the relinquishing of the best years of his youth. many of his works are admired in all the world and there are many merchants and collectors, especially in the United States, who display his productions in their public and private galleries.

Besides the material gratification, although necessary, we must realize that nothing is worth the satisfaction of creating with your own hands, works which with their presence alone can raise the spirits and guide the mind across paths of beauty and knowledge. It is the precise sensation of having worked with a material, glass, which has all the charachteristics of mystery and the fascination of the impossibility of existence, which lets itself be formed and transfromed from an evasive, amorphous mass, into a masterpiece cloaked in light, almost as if this last was the only support of a weight which seems nonexistent. All of this is consented only to a few "ministers" admitted by destiny of birth into this strip of land surrounded by water, in the workshop of a "Vulcano," to compete with the fire and Earth to extract from theri viscera, almost by ascrilegious theft, the iridescent chromatism of the rainbow and the incorruptible compatibility of the purest diamonds.

Luciano Nichetto is one of the "simple" men who knew how to combine his talents with the great traditions of the past and with the current necessities of artistic synthesis to give life to something which, besides the representative schemata, can serve as lessons for future generations. An artist who, with his "modest" contribution, consents to the survival of a unique and inimitable art and of a millenary world, the world of the Glass of Murano.