Italian Masters in 20th Century | 5 Talents with free souls

In the world of home deco, Italian designers have always been in the forefront, and the turbulent world landscape of the first half of the 20th century has created a group of bold and daring designers. Today we are bringing you 5 talented designers who are not bound by social norms, who are free to express their personal ideas and who have an insight into the future.

When we talk about these five designers - Joe Colombo, Carlo Mollino, Ettore Sottsass, Enzo Mari and Alessandro Mendini - it's as if we can see them sitting in the corner of a bar, calmly sipping Negroni cocktails, smoking cigarettes and arguing about everything that's going on in the world.

01

Joe Colombo 

The Explosive Soloist Drummer in Design  

Joe Colombo was born in Milan in 1930 and studied at the Accademia di Brera in Milan, then the Faculty of Architecture at Politecnico di Milano. He worked with many renowned home furnishing brands such as Kartell, Alessi, Amini, Boffi, Bonacina, Kartell, Longhi, Zanotta, etc. He specialized in the diversity of plastic materials, creativity and practicality, and his vision of design trends far exceeds that of his fellow Italian designers.

Anyone who has seen the classic American film "The Graduate" knows that the 1960s was the world of plastic, and among the world's first chairs made entirely of ABS plastic and mass-produced was Colombo's 4860 chair. Many of his designs are very spacey, for instance, the silhouette of the LEM lounge chair and the Elda chair's upholstery seem to remind people of the moon landing vehicle and space suits.

Colombo likes portable objects, as well as compact and self-contained environments. He has designed some futuristic, Kubrickian-style modular living spaces that were used extensively in Stanley Kubrick's famous film 2001 A Space Odyssey. Each scene is a large vacuum-formed plastic box containing a bed, kitchen, bathroom and closet - seemingly everything one would need, all skillfully assembled with Swiss army knife-like precision.

In addition to home deco products, he designed a cocktail glass, produced by Arnolfo di Cambio, that allowed one to hold a drink and a cigarette in the same hand, which, not surprisingly, was an instant hit. Joe Colombo's designs have always broken the limits of thinking, ignoring the established orders, as wild and free as the jazz music of that era, and if we compare him with music, then he is undoubtedly the explosive solo drummer in the jazz band.

As early as fifty or sixty years ago, Joe Colombo's thinking about human living was already very forward-looking. He did not follow the trend, nor did he stay in the past, but he was a fearless pioneer. Reviewing his design in the context of times, one cannot help but be respectful. Unfortunately, Colombo died young of a sudden heart attack on his 41st birthday. He always suprised the industry with his explosive energy, and it is such a pity that his design career was rather short.

02 Ettore Sottsass

The Untamed Provocateur 

Ettore Sottsass was born in 1917 in Innsbruck, Austria, to an Italian father and an Austrian mother. He graduated from the Politecnico di Torino in 1939 with a degree in architecture and then fought in World War II. He later moved to Milan, Italy, where he began curating exhibitions for Triennale and helped found Domus magazine. He worked home furnishing brands such as Artemide, Kartell and Zanotta.

Ettore Sottsass first gained fame in the design world with his icon product - the Valentine red typewriter for Olivetti. Before his design career took off, Sottsass hung out in California with people of the Beat Generation such as Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti, and later founded a publishing house in Italy to translate their works.

Sottsass was also a photographer, having photographed the famous American folk musician Bob Dylan, the Jewish fashion photographer Helmut Newton, and the Spanish painter Picasso. His encounters with these cultural and artistic figures have provided him with a wealth of inspiration for his work, as well as evidence of the defiant side of his personality.

In the second half of the 20th century, the internationally popular home deco style was calm and elegant, which Sottsass despised, rejecting all impersonal design dogma and creating works that were often novel and playful, showing the essence of postmodernism.

A risk-taker and provocateur, Sottsass attracted the attention of many radicals in the arts and culture, such as David Bowe, the godfather of British glam rock, who secretly collected his designs. Although Sottsass's personal life has been criticized as being a womanizer, it is undeniable that he has left a strong mark on the history of design, and his radical and wild style had an indelible effect on the development of design at the time.

03 Carlo Mollino 

The Dandy Boy Maestro 

Carlo Mollino was born in 1905 in Turin, in the Piedmont region of Italy, from a wealthy family with no worries about food or clothing. He did not marry, had no long-term partner or children, and thus spent all his resources on his various passions in life.

He grew up with a wide range of interests, from architecture and design to racing and even the occult. At the same time, he was never superficial in his interests. He loved skiing and wrote "Introduction to Speed Skiing"; he loved racing and his Bisiluro won the professional championship of the Le Mans 24-hour rally; he was influenced by his father's love of flying and bought seven planes to study, becoming a professional aerobatic pilot and aircraft designer.

Carlo Mollino launched his career as an architect in 1930. He was a rationalist, but also abandoned dogmatic academic thinking in some of his works. He designed the RAI stadium in Turin, which was a very avant-garde structure and design for its time, and the Teatro Regio Torino, which became one of the "Four Treasures of Turin" thanks to its magnificent interior and glamorous lines.

Anyone familiar with the home furnishing brand Zanotta definitely knows about the Reale table designed by Carlo Mollino in 1949, and it was a 20th century Reale table that set a record price of 3,824,000 dollars at Christie's in 2005. The legs of this piece have the form of an airplane, a mark of Carlo Mollino's love of flight and a testament to his genius for crossover design.

Carlo Mollino paid frequent tribute to feminine beauty, with his Milo mirror and Fenis chair, both inspired by female curves. He often dressed casually for meetings with clients, but as soon as the meeting was over, he would change into a proper suit and take his lady friend to shopping with his Porsche.

Carlo Mollino takes on architectural projects only depending on his preferences, and his furniture pieces are also rarely in mass production. He was a charismatic designer and a popular figure on campus while teaching at the Politecnico di Torino. It is difficult to use a single label to define Carlo Mollino, but that is also why he has become such a unique presence in the history of design.

04 Enzo Mari 

Practical Utopianist 

Enzo Mari was born in Novara, Italy in 1932 and graduated from the Accademia di Brera in Milan in 1956, after which he started working as an artist. In the 1950s and 1960s, he began working as a product designer with home furnishing brands including Artemide, Danese, Kartell, Magis, Rexite, Zanotta and others.

Enzo Mari was very much against the empty formality of the industrial society of his time, and was also concerned with social issues. He was a romantic idealist himself, but his designs never left the everyday life of the masses, and could be described as a combination of utopia and pragmatism. Each of his works has a simplistic and sculptural quality that inspires the user to use them rather than just look at them as works of art.

In 1974, Enzo Mari published Autoprogettazione, a furniture assembly guide for individual users, explaining how to assemble furniture by themselves with wood, nails, and hammers. For Enzo Mari, assembling furniture with one's own hands, simple raw materials and tooling techniques had the value of democratizing design as a way to create a new paradigm away from consumerism and capitalism.

Enzo Mari was not a fan of the inconsistencies of the adult world. He was particularly interested in the way children communicate with the world and studied child psychology. He believed that children are naturally sensitive to images, forms and information, and his "16 Animals Puzzle" for Danese is one of his signature pieces, inspired by the process of designing toys for his own children. He wanted to design for a better life for all, not just for some.

Enzo Mari was also known in the industry for his short temper and his outspokenness to clients and students alike, perhaps one of the reasons he did not gain the fame he deserved. Enzo Mari was a man of his own principles who refused to play by the rules of society or turn his designs into capitalistic products, and was revered as the "conscience of the design world".

05 Alessandro Mendini 

The Old Codger Who Makes Objects Smile 

Alessandro Mendini was born in Milan in 1931, graduated from the Politecnico di Milano with a degree in architecture, worked as an editor for Casabella and Domus, and was one of the founders of the Domus Academy. As a designer and architect, Alessandro Mendini was also a rebel, playing a pivotal role in the Italian post-modernist movement of the 1970s, moving between art and design and challenging the uninteresting "primacy of function".

Alessandro Mendini's works are colorful and highly decorative, often with a strong sense of cynicism, sometimes using collage of historical design symbols to achieve an anti-modernist purpose. He is also one of the core members of the Memphis group founded by Ettore Sottsass that we previously mentioned. He collaborated with home furnishing brands such as Artemide, Kartell, Magis, Porro, Zanotta, etc. His masterpieces include Zanotta's Zabro Table Chair, which can be switched between table and chair at will.

The most revolutionary of all Mendini's furniture pieces is the Proust armchair, created in 1978. Mendini himself wrote poetry and prose, and this armchair was inspired by Marcel Proust, the "father of modern fiction". The famous Proust chair has been launched with many brands in various materials and colorways. In an interview with Dezeen in 2015, Mendini described the chair as an "intellectual exercise", stating that "this chair is very expensive. It has no function. It's only for amusement".

In addition to furniture design, Mendini is also involved in industrial design, and his 1994 Anna G. bottle opener for Alessi is a iconic product in the industry. Because of Mendini's bold and original design style, several fashion brands such as Supreme have also collaborated with him on skateboards and apparel using Mendini's graphic designs.

Alessandro Mendini says "I treat objects as if they were human beings; I make them smile." He opposes the rigidity and mechanicalness of modernism, the hegemony of the authoritative mainstream and large corporates, and brings back the emotional values lost in the tide of industrial commodities. His spirit may also leave us with some food for thought today.

From these five designers, we see the pursuit of the ultimate fun and beauty, but also the adherence to pragmatism. Perhaps it's unfair to say which one is better, because each one has their own contribution to the history of design. Their seemingly untamed style is not superficial showing off, but a return to their inner being and guarding their values.

As Alessandro Mendini says, "Nowadays it's not easy to work in art, architecture, fashion, sculpture and so on. We are in a time of dramatic change, an age of the Internet, and it is not easy to find your own artistic path in a sea of data and information input. The external world is too noisy, so don't look outward, but return to your heart and find inspiration in your soul." Perhaps not everyone can become like these masters, but their works may be a reminder for our artistic creation and expression today - when we pay attention to what's happening around, we also need more power to look inward.

Planning：JP Concept China

Supervisor：Yi

Editor：Xinwei

Pictures' copyright：websites of designers and brands