Little Italy

New York hails 50 great years of Italian design

Marisa Bartolucci -- Interior Design, 11/1/2003 12:00:00 AM

The Italians have a knack for transforming the elements of the everyday—furniture, fashion, food, even the lowly coffee bean—into the aesthetically transcendental. Celebrating this national talent, "1950-2000: Theater of Italian Creativity" made a brief stop last month at the annex of New York's Dia Art Foundation. The spectacular show was conceived by Cosmit, the group that produces the fabled Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan; organized by the Italian Trade Commission; and staged by Gae Aulenti, herself an icon of Italian design.

At the exhibit's entry, visitors first encountered two blocks of Carrara marble cut from the quarry used by Michelangelo—a nod to the deep roots of Italian genius. Inside was a tantalizing visual minestrone of Italian-made objects. More than 1,000 of them, some legendary and some quotidian, were stacked in a multi-tiered chronological display set against a background of blueprints. Interspersed amid this design landscape, speakers and monitors broadcast excerpts from radio and films from the appropriate era. Diverse experiences and fields were thus woven together in what one of the curators, Vanni Pasca, calls the "web of surprise and virtuosity, deviation and invention" that defines Italian creativity.

The most extraordinary part of the story is the complexity of that inventiveness. Italians are not just inspired designers but also innovative industrialists and gifted communicators. They're remarkably flexible in outlook, too. If Italian design expressed the exuberance of a highly national spirit in the early years after World War II, Italy's outlook is now much more international, drawing on talent worldwide. The likes of Ron Arad, Marc Newson, and Philippe Starck avidly collaborate with companies in Italy, because they remain unrivalled in their willingness to experiment and promote fresh ideas. As Pasca suggests, it is this unprecedented fusion of local and global that will undoubtedly propel Italian design to further greatness over the half century to come.

Gatefold: The show's postwar section revealed how Italian design quickly moved from consumer durables and luxury fashion to high-style furnishings. Among the classics displayed were Dante Giacosa's 1957 Nuova 500 for Fiat, Gio Ponti's 1957 Superleggera chairs for Cassina, Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni's 1962 Arco lamps for Flos, and the 1966 MV Agusta three-cylinder motorcycle.

Clockwise from top: Massimo Varetto's 1997 Eccetera prototype chandelier for Opos. Corradino D'Ascanio's 1949 Vespa scooter for Piaggio & C. The 1967 Eclisse lamps, by Vico Magistretti for Artemide. The 1990's section of the show. A 1969 Valentine typewriter by Ettore Sottsass and Perry King for Olivetti.