Italian auction house Wannenes' upcoming, 29-30 June auction starts off the summer with curated pieces that represent the elite of Italian and international industrial design from the 20th century, and the happy harmony between form and function.
Carlo Mollino has made his artistic experience a journey exploring the mystery of creativity, marked by overwhelming rigour and a pleasure for irrational complexity. The objects bend to his idea of form, as we can see in the splendid suspension lamp in brass and painted aluminium from 1953, the year in which he created two chairs in solid chestnut wood with Ettore Canaliin Brescia.
Max Ingrand, the French master glassmaker and decorator capable of creating real design classics, left an indelible mark in the decade of 1954-64 when he was the artistic direction of Fontana Arte. He explains his relationship with light as "A chandelier or a a luminous element must comply with certain standards, it must adapt to the volume of the rooms it must illuminate, it must be part of the very spirit of the architecture of the rooms to become an integral part of it." A principle that manifests itself in this rare Fontana Arte 50s suspension lamp mod.1563A 'Dalia', in brass, bronze casting, curved and coloured crystal. It's unique because the stems are in four different colours.
Experimental is the bed by Osvaldo Borsani from around 1960, in vinyl leather and bronze enamelled metal, with the artist's collaboration with the young sculptor brothers Arnaldo and Giò Pomodoro on the headboard.
Gaetano Pesce is one of the most important exponents of radical design and one of the founders of Gruppo N. Through his artistic, architectural and design creations, he has fuelled the debate on issues of great importance, including the theorisation of diversified series of similar but not identical object, and sensory stimulation by means of experiences around or inside the objects. Here is his modular sofa mod. 'Sunset in New York', c. 1984, in plastic material, wood and upholstered fabric, in which the designer reshapes the skyline of the Big Apple.
Kinetic and hypnotic is this luminous panel mod. 'Programme' by Gianfranco Fini, in steel profiles and tiles, methacrylate, produced by New Lamp around 1970, while the group of lamps by Isamu Noguchi from the Akari 60 series in iron rod, mulberry paper, imprinted ink mark, appear as light and impalpable as a breath of air.
Design for Ettore Sottsass is a dynamic magma of countless technical, intellectual and human skills that produce objects, furniture and living spaces that are composed in an emotional and playful, choral and ironic way. His furniture consists of sculptures, altars and monoliths that inhabit the space with an approach that is as positive as it is experimental. His shapes and colours live in harmonious disproportions and the materials coexist happily, creating a synthesis that is evocative and transgressive together. Elegant in its modern classicism is the mod. 'MS. 120' sideboard in laminated wood veneered in exotic wood.
Gio Ponti, in his professional career as an architect and designer, always anticipated the trends of the times. In each of his creations, be it a house, a vase, a piece of furniture or a lamp, a certain power and timelessness exists because of its originality, functionality and style. Even in a ceiling or wall lamp in painted brass, satin opal glass, produced by Arredoluce in Monza in the 1960s, we can grasp the constant inspiration that fuels all of Ponti's eclectic and vast research.