Albissola Marina, on the Italian Riviera, has a near-mythic reputation in the history of ceramics. An important center of production since the fifteenth century, the Ligurian town became a hub for avant-gardists in the twentieth century, when the likes of Lucio Fontana, Asger Jorn, Wifredo Lam, and Piero Manzoni came to it and created sculptures from clay. Albissola—with its many in situ examples of radical and traditional pottery—recently provided a change of scenery for the New York–based American painter Louis Fratino, who spent a month in residency at the local ceramic center Studio Ernan