"Leopards" Dimensions: h. 22 cm, length 60 cm Renato Ronzan Polychrome Turin ceramics from the 70s/80s, signed and numbered under the base: Ronzan made in Italy 755 Renato. Giovanni Ronzan, the founder of the business, was born on 24/9/1906 and began working very young at the Bonato ceramics company in Bassano. After attending professional sculpture courses at the Technical Institute of Nove, he moved to Milan, where he began working as a ceramicist at the Fabris porcelain factory. In the late 1920s, Mrs. Elena Konig in Scavini, founder of the Lenci company, sought out expert ceramicists to boost her famous cloth doll factory and tackle the production of ceramic objects; Giovanni was contacted and moved to Turin, where he was hired on 31/1/1930 as a painter. Attending evening courses at the Albertina Academy of Turin and an innate talent allowed him to create some models himself, which, as was in the generous style of Mrs. Scavini, could be signed by him (with a small black flower next to the Lenci brand). Married in 1933, in May 1939 he started his own business (like many other "secessionists" of the Lenci company) and founded the first Ronzan ceramics company, with the laboratory in Via Villarbasse 29 in Turin. As the war situation deteriorated, with increasingly frequent bombings on the city, at the end of 1942 Giovanni Ronzan managed, with a wagon fortunately obtained from the transport company Gondrand, to transfer the equipment and models to Bassano del Grappa, where he could continue his activities in more peaceful conditions. After the war, he fully resumed production, always in Bassano. Since the company had retained its registered office in Turin, in 1949 Giovanni Ronzan intended to return to the original headquarters and, as the other two partners did not intend to follow him, he left the company and returned to Turin. From this year onwards, two Ronzan ceramics companies began to exist simultaneously: - one, renamed Ceramiche Originali di Giovanni Ronzan, based in Turin Via Guido Reni 80/17 (now Corso Allamano 19) - the other, named Ceramiche Ronzan e Cecchetto, in Bassano del Grappa, later changed to Ronzan e Figlio. The models, all created by Giovanni and now totaling a considerable number of about 200 between secular and religious subjects, were separated by mutual agreement by drawing lots; in this way, both companies were guaranteed to continue their activities with a sufficient number of models. In Turin, Giovanni increasingly developed the number of models, with particular focus on religious items, and signed the objects "Originale GiovRonzan, Torino", in order to distinguish himself from the production of his brother Giuseppe, who remained in Bassano. To accelerate the development of the company, Giovanni in 1955 purchased the models and equipment of the Berard company in Milan, specialized in animals and figures; all the models thus acquired were profoundly revised in the sculptural details and color choices, to bring them back to the style of the original models of the artist Giovanni. Continuing the work of expanding the models offered to customers, Giovanni in 1957 purchased the models of the Keramos company of Destefanis, operating until that year in Turin; even these models, essentially represented by little angels and Madonnas, are gradually revised by Giovanni in the details of the retouching and in the choice of colors and inserted into his catalog. For health reasons, Giovanni retired from business in 1968 and sold the company, with all the models he created, to his brother Antonio; to succeed him, he moved to Turin from Bassano, where he worked as a ceramicist. From 1968 Giovanni Ronzan therefore ceased to produce; from that year he moved to his lands of origin in Bassano where he dedicated himself to the creation of some models for his brother Giuseppe and, for his own satisfaction, to sculpture and oil painting until his death in January 1974. In 1980, the brother Giuseppe, who had continued the business alone in Bassano, died leaving the company to his son Renato; Renato continued the business until 1996, the year in which even the company in Bassano ceased to produce. In 1985 the brother Antonio, who had taken over Giovanni's company in Turin in 1968, died leaving the business to his children Giuditta and Pietro, who continued the activity of ceramicists, with the name "Ceramica d’Arte Religiosa di Ronzan P.& C.". In 2001 also the company located in Turin ceased operations and, also following the death of Pietro Ronzan, the original models were dispersed.