Riccardo Gatti‘s early years in Faenza matched those of Pietro Melandri.

In the early years of the twentieth century, he started to draw and sculpt at a young age alongside the prodigious talents of Domenico Baccarini, Ercole Drei, Giovanni Guerrini, Francesco Nonni, Giuseppe Ugonia and others.

He attended the Faenza school of arts and crafts and became a student of Virginio Minardi and then worked in Minardi’s shop.

He went out on his own in 1927 after resigning from Castellani and Masini’s “Faventia Ars,” the continuation of Minardi’s company.

On the suggestion of the writer and journalist Giuseppe Fabbri, who organized the production and sale of futuristic ceramics, he adapted decorations from the cartoons of Balla and Dal Monte into the shapes of his ceramics, sharing their spirit.

He showed these works at the Futurist Exhibition, in October 1928 opened by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, in the rooms of the “G. Sarti” musical company.

The ceramists Mario Ortolani and Anselmo Bucci also joined the production activism to organize futurist ceramics at Fabbri’s behest.

An interesting remark was made about these creations by Tullio d’Albissola who was next to Gatti at the Milanese exhibition “Trentatré Futuristi”:”… in September 28, the Florentine ceramist, Riccardo Gatti, made some futurist ceramics based on Balla and other cartoons, but in the city of majolica, clay did not docility obey the whimsical inventions of these innovators.”