Centro Studio Pittori nell’Arte del Vetro di Murano

this group of artists founded by Egidio Costantini is active from 1950 to 1955.

The first artist Egidio addresses is Gino Krayer , a Venetian surrealist painter, who puts at his disposal some drawings for his first attempts to put his intuitions into practice.

Egidio then went to Murano, in a furnace, bringing with him Krayer's drawings and his intuitions; thus guiding the master glassmaker's hand with his own voice and his eyes creates the first glass copies, which receive the painter's immediate approval.

The success obtained by Egidio pushes Krayer to present him a group of Venetian artists: Fioravante Seibezzi , Armando Tonello , Mario Carraro . Egidio also transforms their designs into glass works. From all artists, and this will always do so with anyone who will collaborate with him, without exception, claims and obtains the maximum freedom to carry out the works in full autonomy by following exclusively those that are his ideas and his intuitions.

Thus began the period of the Centro Studio Pittori nell’Arte del Vetro di Murano (Center for Painters in the Art of Murano Glass)

The first collective exhibitions are also set up: the first exhibition is inaugurated in Murano on April 18, 1953, followed by the same one taken to Treviso, then to Perugia and finally to Rome.

In the same period Egidio feels the need to write down his ideas of innovation and radical transformation of the Art of Glass and decides to communicate his great Project to the most famous artists of the time. He writes dozens and dozens of letters in which he presents his proposal to the artists. The first to answer is the Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka , their first collaboration dates back to 1952: from one of his drawings
Egidio makes a vase with inverted handles called Vaso Baccanti. In the same period he also produced works based on designs by Le Corbusier : one of the first was Bucranio Blu (1954).

In 1954 Egidio went to Paris, he wanted to meet an artist who was a friend of Pablo Picasso and could write him a letter of introduction: the Spanish painter Pedro Flores was willing to write it. In Paris in the meantime Egidio had met Alexander Calder to whom he had delivered the fish made to his design, Jean Fautrier who had made him a gift of a drawing, then Gino Severini and finally Saverio Pozzati, in Sepo art, it was the latter who told him the name of Flores.

From Paris Egidio moved to Vallauris on the French Riviera, site of Picasso's residence. From the meeting between the two artists there is not simply a collaboration agreement but a real friendship that will last until the death of Picasso, which occurred in 1973. The great Andalusian artist gives Egidio the drawings of Flamenco, Centaur and Janus Two-faced : the first masterpieces created by Egidio based on a design by Picasso will be born. In the following years new meetings and new works in glass will follow followed by the other drawings that Picasso will deliver to him.

Still on his travels in France, Egidio knows, becomes a friend and begins to collaborate with Jean Cocteau , writer, poet, painter, playwright and director, and with the poet Andrè Verdet, both friends of Picasso.
In the mid-1950s, the group of the Centro Studio Pittori nell’Arte del Vetro di Murano went into crisis due to a discrepancy of opinions and interests: Egidio was more interested than ever in making his art grow but a part of the artists was more interested in immediate earnings.

The rupture becomes definitive in '55 when Egidio decides to go his own way and delivers his resignation as a partner and director of the Center.
In the same year Egidio opened its own art gallery in Venice in the field of San Filippo and Giacomo: Jean Cocteau named it  Fucina degli Angeli.