Sunday,
March 25, 2007
Italians Excelled at Modern Design
The
ANNOTICO Report
Of
the modern design that appeared on the international stage after
Recently,
it seems, great Italian pieces have been popping up all along the
"In
"Many of us
regard Italian furnishings and interior design as the greatest design of the
last 60 years." says The Corcoran Gallery of Art's director and president,
Of
the modern design that appeared on the international stage after
Italian design
schools, based principally in
Recently, it
seems, great Italian pieces have been popping up all along the
At the Palm Beach
International Fine Art & Antique Fair in February, Mallett
of London, which usually exhibits only the most traditional English antiques,
featured a pair of Italian mirrors made by Fontana Arte (founded by Ponti in 1932) at the front of its display.
While those were
high-end pieces, I also spotted a pair of glass Mandarin figures by Lino Tagliapietra (born in Murano in 1934) at a recent
fairgrounds show. The price: only $125.
The pages of Icons:
Design of the 20th Century by Charlotte & Peter Fiell
(Taschen, $9.99) hold the names of dozens of the
greats of Italian design, though Ponti is likely best
known to the American public.
Like many of his
compatriots, Ponti was multitalented, with a finger
in many forms of expression - architecture, ceramics, glass, furniture,
flatware, even sanitary fixtures.
Turin-born Carlo Mollino (1905-1973), inspired by futurism and surrealism,
was an architect and photographer and designed a racing car that won at
And
architect/filmmaker/furniture designer Gaetano Pesce, born in 1939, has continued to design important
pieces in the 21st century. His forms, inclined to be funny, lumpy and
endearing, were the subject of a Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibition from
November 2005 to April 2006; Pesce himself was
honored in 2005 with the Design Collaborative Award by the
Most good
20th-century-modern auctions have a strong component of Italian design. On Dec.
19, Christie's
But no one has
done more to introduce great Italian pieces in this country than Wright
auctions in
Among the items
to be offered are a rare circa 1950 settee by Franco Albini
(presale estimate: $9,000-$12,000), a 1958 walnut Stadera
desk by the same designer ($20,000-$25,000), and a shapely Mollino
glass coffee table, circa 1950 ($40,000-$50,000).
"In
The Corcoran
Gallery of Art's exhibition "Modernism: Designing a New World
1914-1939" includes the early roots of the post-World War II explosion of
Italian creativity.
"Modernism"
is the latest in a series of exhibitions organized by the
The Corcoran's
director and president,
"So
Modernism is quite classically defined in this exhibition as being those
movements that embraced a utopian ideal."
In other words, Greenhalgh says, the term should not be used vaguely to
mean all sorts of things created in the 20th century. For this particular show,
Italian pieces come in at the beginning and end of its 1914-1939 time period.
"There is a
beautiful section of futurism at the start, with seminal things that have been
brought over from
Futurism took off
about 1911, Greenhalgh says, and "its first
phase went up to the First World War. It was a very romantic but violent
movement, very committed to technology. So quite a few of them enthusiastically
joined up in the First World War and enthusiastically got killed.
"Then there
is another section at the end. When Mussolini came to power, he didn't
immediately get rid of Modernism. His government flirted with it."
The better-known
work of postwar Italian designers such as Ponti, Pesce and Cesare Colombo will be included in a future
exhibition, Greenhalgh says.
"The really
great takeoff is after the Second World War. We're curating
a giant exhibition on postmodernism, which will come up in a year from now, and
there will be a huge emphasis on Italian design in that.
"Many of us
regard Italian furnishings and interior design as the greatest design of the
last 60 years."
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