Gae Aulenti was one of the most influential and prolific Italian architects and designers of the post-war period. An advocate of the Neoliberty movement, she is remembered for the individual stylistic quality of her work, which spanned product design and major architectural projects.

Born in 1927, Aulenti studied architecture at Milan’s Polytechnic University and graduated as only one of two women in her class. She began her career in the 1950s as the editor of the design magazine Casabella, where she became one of the proponents of the Neoliberty movement: a type of revivalist architecture that emerged in reaction to the rationalist International style of modernism.

Aulenti applied these principles within her parallel career as a freelance architect and designer, where she worked for names such as Olivetti, Pirelli and Knoll. Committed to designing ‘forms that could create experiences’, her works are striking for their bold, playful and architectural nature – from her Locus Solus seating series (1964) to her cult- favourite Pipistrello lamp, two examples of how she contributed to Italy’s global dominance in the field of product design.

Arguably the crowning glory of Aulenti’s career, and the most famous symbol of her Neoliberty approach, was her elaborate renovation of the Musee d’Orsay. This led to further large-scale projects, such as the renovation of the Palazzo Grassi as an art museum in Venice, and designing a new space for the Pompidou in Paris – examples of her enormous legacy. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Grand International Prize at the 1964 Milan Triennial and the Praemium Imperiale in 1991.

Cini Boeri was an award-winning industrial designer and architect, and notably one of the few female Italian designers to enjoy international success in the postwar era. Regularly described as a pioneering force in her field, many of her designs – acclaimed for their timeless style and focus on functionality - are still in production today.

Born in 1924, Boeri graduated from the Polytechnic University in Milan – the city where she spent her whole life – in 1951. After stints working for influential architects such as Giò Ponti and Marco Zanuso, she founded her own studio in 1963. ‘I would like architecture to design joy’ she exclaimed. Her work is celebrated for its emphasis on the psychological connection between humans and their environment. She believed that beauty was the result of function, and strove to create work of lasting value.

Boeri focused on industrial design as well as civil architecture. She was best known for her revolutionary modular seating designs, among them (all for Artflex): Bobo Lounge (1967), the first exclusively foam Monobloc seat; the polyurethane Serpentone lounge (1971), which could be sold by the metre; and the Strips series (1972) offering endless options for configuration, which earned her the Compasso d’Oro – one of many prestigious prizes she received throughout her career.

‘Cini invented pop objects and architectures,’ reflected her son, architect Stefano Boeri, after his mother’s death at 96 in 2020. ‘Never boring and presumptuous and at the same time extremely elegant – an almost impossible blend that Cini knew how to create.’ With pieces in and among MoMA, New York and The Louvre, Paris, Boeri’s legacy continues to influence the design world.

Achille Castiglioni was one of the most influential protagonists across the full spectrum of mid-century Italian modern design. He achieved particular success in partnership with his fellow designer brother Pier Giacomo, creating works that emphasised the shared importance of imagination and functionality.

The son of a prominent Milanese sculptor, the creative-spirited Achille studied classics and the arts before graduating as an architect from the city’s Politecnico in 1944. From there, he joined his brothers’ design firm Studio Castiglioni, embarking on a prolific career that would see him collaborate with leading furniture companies such as Kartell, Alessi and Cassina.

An ingenious experimenter attentive to the technical and aesthetic importance of design, much of Castiglioni’s work – made in ‘symbiosis’ with Pier – has become iconic. This includes the Mezzadro stool and the Salla stool (Zanotta, 1957), both of which borrowed from elements of the Duchampian readymade, and the streetlight-like Arco Lamp which overcame the need for complicated wiring. His approach was problem-solving yet playful: ‘My method is to take out again and over again, until I will find the main design component.’

Castiglioni continued to design after his brother’s death in 1968, and for over two decades taught architecture at the Politecnico of Turin and Milan. He was a founding member of the Industrial Design Association (ADI) in 1956; received Honorary Degrees from the Royal College of Art, London (1987), and the Politecnico di Milano (2001); and won numerous awards, including the Compasso d’Oro eight times.

Castiglioni’s career was testament to his principle that ‘Design shouldn’t be trendy. Good Design should last over time, until it wears out.’

One of the most influential Italian designers of the 20th century, Joe Colombo’s furniture embraced functionality with a futuristic, dynamic style. As the designer would say: ‘Habits change; the interior of rooms has to change with them.’

Born in 1930, Colombo initially trained as architect at the Politecnico di Milano, where his contemporaries included the founders of the Movimento Nucleare – a group of painters who sought to embrace the tensions of the modern nuclear age in their work. Channelling these themes into his career as a designer, Colombo opened his own studio in 1962. There he began pioneering modular designs in furniture, lighting, interiors and glassware that were bold in colour and form, inspired by the Space Race era of science fiction films.

Though Colombo’s work demonstrated a strong attentiveness to the visual impact of design, he was preoccupied by the importance of functionality above everything – preferring to think of his objects as items of ‘equipment’ rather than ‘furniture’.

Often making use of the emerging materials of the time, Colombo was also the first designer to use moulded plastic. The result was a body of furniture that captured and defined the spirit of the era, which earned Colombo the Compasso d’Oro and has been the subject of numerous international exhibitions. These have included the 2006 Vitra Design Museum retrospective, Inventing the Future – a title befitting the enduring popularity and historical significance of Colombo’s work.

Adalberto Dal Lago’s career spans architecture, design and an academic career teaching and writing in both fields. He has published many works on these topics, curated numerous design exhibitions and served on the jury of several eminent design competitions – cementing his international status as of the leading surviving names and authorities on Italian 20th-century architecture and design.

Born in Milan in 1937, Dal Lago initially studied for a Degree in Architecture at the city’s Politecnico. It was here that he launched his academic career, first as an Assistant Professor of Decoration, before becoming chair of interior design and then of the elements of composition.

In parallel, since 1963 he has had an international freelance career as an architect and designer. This has varied from large-scale projects - such restoring a national heritage building at Piazzale Michelangelo and the Italian plants of the Fiat, Alfa, Lancia and Ferrari Group - to designing domestic objects for brands such as Bilumen, Esperia and Vistosi Italy.

Dal Lago’s Drive lamp for Bieffeplast-Francesconi was first created in 1974. Decorative and playful, it forms part of a series of wall and table lamps all made from plastic, rubber and safety glass. The lamp’s design echoes the industrial movement and the Space Age style, both the archetypal aesthetics for the time.

Dal Lago’s versatility has also extended to editing the Rassegna-Modi di abitare oggi magazine and the Technology and Design section of L’architettura-Cronache e Storia, published by Bruno Zevi.

One of the most iconic artists of the twentieth century, Salvador Dalí is arguably Spain’s most famous Surrealist. A controversial and colourful figure, he assimilated a number of artistic styles, though became most well-known for his explorations of subconscious imagery.

Dalí was born in 1904 in Figueras, Spain, and trained as an art student in Madrid and Barcelona. In the late 1920s, he was marked by two discoveries: firstly, Sigmund Freud’s writings into the unconscious; and secondly, his affiliation with the Paris Surrealists who sought to establish new creative processes that ‘activated’ the visual language of the unconscious mind.

Dalí’s strange, dreamlike compositions sought to disorientate the viewer and prompt new ways of seeing. Though his political views resulted in his estrangement from the Surrealist Group, its principles remained central to his work as he developed an international reputation and branched out into set design, fashion and film. Inspired by Renaissance artists such as Raphael, he developed a more academic style of painting and developed his own modern iconographies. Fascinated by the power of symbolism, his lobsters, eggs and clocks (among others) would later inspire the Pop Artists.

Dalí’s work has been the subject of numerous major retrospectives, including at: the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1941); the Palazzo Pallavicini in Rome (1964); institutions across Tokyo, Nagoya and Kyoto (1964); and the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou (1980). The Salvador Dalí Museum in Cleveland was inaugurated in 1971. He died in Figueras in 1989.

Tom Dixon rose to prominence in the mid-1980s as the famously maverick self-taught British designer. Currently Creative Director of his eponymous brand specialising in lighting, furniture and accessories, he has established a worldwide reputation as one of the leading figures in 21st century design.

Inspired by the transformational power of design, Dixon made his name in the 1980s with a line in welded savage furniture made from manipulated found objects and industrial materials. During this period he set up ‘Space’, a creative think-tank and shopfront space for himself and other creative designers to explore ideas collaboratively. Working ‘instinctively rather than cerebrally’, his design remains centred on personal expression.

Arguably his most iconic piece is the S-chair made for Cappellini (1991). Now an emblem of contemporary design, the chair – made a year after his Bird lounge chair (1990) – is representative of Dixon’s ability to turn an artisanal product into an authentic industrial masterpiece. The model can today be found in permanent collections such as MoMA in New York.

Aside from founding the Tom Dixon brand in 2002, he served as Creative Director of Habitat for a decade, during which he successful rejuvenated the brand. His collections are a biannual fixture at the Milan international furniture fair and the London Design Festival. With an already-canonised placed in the history of modern design, his works have been acquired by some of the most prestigious museums across the globe, including the V&A Museum in London and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

One of the major European artists of the twentieth century, Jean Dubuffet was a prolific painter and sculptor who founded the Art Brut movement. Proclaiming himself ‘anti-culture’, he embraced the aesthetics of ‘low art’ made by children, the mentally ill and other outsiders, championing a more authentic approach to image-making.

Born in 1901 to a wealthy bourgeoisie family in Le Havre, Dubuffet’s early career was spent working as an industrial draftsman and later in the family wine business. He committed to becoming an artist in 1942, and was influenced by artists André Breton and Paul Klee as well as Hans Prinzhorn’s book on psychopathic art. He believed that the everyday life of ordinary people contained more art and poetry than did so-called ‘great paintings’. In 1945, he began collecting work by untutored individuals, preferring their direct method of artmaking, and in 1949 published the Art Brut (‘raw art’) manifesto, proclaiming the superiority of this work over traditionally accepted conventions of art.

Dubuffet’s art spanned outdoor sculptures, theatrical props known as the ‘practicables’, as well as canvases that incorporated crude and unorthodox materials. From 1962, he produced a series of iconic works that used a palette of only red, white, black and blue, inspired by his ballpoint doodles – typical of his assimilation of everyday culture within his practice.

Dubuffet has been the subject of numerous exhibitions worldwide, including major retrospectives at the Centre Georges Pompidou (2001) and the Barbican Gallery in London (2021). He died in 1985 in Paris.

An enfant terrible of the design world, Louis Durot is a French sculptor and chemical engineer. His bold creative flair and technological expertise resulted in a unique and often unpredictable body of work, one that gained worldwide traction.

Born in Paris in 1939, he studied mathematics at the Faculté des Sciences and in 1963 began to work as an engineer at Equipel. At this time, he began to make friends in the art world, uniting figures from a variety of disciplines to form an artists commune. He eventually became acquainted with Nouveau Realist sculptor César, whom he helped to master the technique of working with polyurethane foam – and eventually began creating his own out of this material.

In the 1970s, Durot set up his own studio space and began creating sculptures inspired by fantastical ‘alien’ life, mushrooms and carnivorous plants – characteristic of his fertile and quirky imagination. While signing with American Colloid and Zolpan, he also began to take on more creative independent projects - from designing furniture to an inflatable sculpture for the French Pavilion in Osaka (a project that was never realised). A brief spell in prison in the 1980s prompted a shift in Durot’s practice towards a Pop style. Inspired by spirals, feet and lips, he designed a limited series of erotic and fetishistic chairs including the now-famous Sexy Feet armchair.

Durot’s creations received an international audience; he has been widely exhibited in museums, retrospectives and salons across Europe, the USA and Asia, where he has also given course in Fine Arts.

Reinhoud D’Haese was a Flemish graphic artist and sculptor. A member of the European avant-garde CoBrA movement, he went on to develop his own unique aesthetic of fairytale forms, many of which have been exhibited worldwide. From 1960, he switched to using only his first name.

Reinhoud was born in 1928 and initially trained as a goldsmith, studying at the Ecole d’Architecture et des Arts Decoratifs in Brussels. Here, he became acquainted with Pierre Alechinsky, meeting other members of CoBrA – a movement based on principles of spontaneity, experiment and often inspired by children’s drawings. He made his first works of art in metal as part of this group, four of which were shown at the famous 1951 CoBrA exhibition in Liège.

After the group disbanded, Reinhoud worked as a blacksmith and made custom ironwork, soon breaking through as an artist in his own right. He won the Young Belgian Sculpture prize in 1958, and over the ensuing decades created works of art in various kinds of metal, many of them taking monstrous, human or vegetable forms.

Reinhoud’s genre of fantastical realism – partly inspired by his CoBrA beginnings – was best epitomised by Reinhoud’s small population of mystical figures kneaded in bread. Based on recognisable motifs, his sculptures represent different archetypes spanning across the scope of the human psyche, alluding to surrealistic motifs such as the bird and mask.

Reinboud’s work was enriched by his worldwide travels and teaching, and he produced a series of lithographs and paintings aside from the sculptures for which he remains best known.

Creative duo Charles and Ray Eames are counted among the most significant designers in 20th-century America. As co-founders of the globally successful Eames Office in 1947, their boundless curiosity and experimentation made ground-breaking impact across numerous fields – from furniture and industrial design to architecture and the photographic arts.

Charles was born in 1907 in St. Louis, Missouri, where he studied architecture at Washington University. He caught the attention of Finnish art nouveau architect Eliel Saarinen, who offered him a fellowship at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan in 1938. It was here that he met Ray, a trained painter, and they married in 1941.

The duo became best known for their work on chairs made from moulded plywood, which had earlier earned Charles and Eero Saarinen prizes at MoMA’s Organic Furniture Competition. With a mission statement to ‘to make the best for the most for the least,’ these chairs were marked by aesthetic integrity, comfort and affordability, typical of all Eames designs. Influential architectural critic Esther McCoy called it ‘the chair of the century’.

From office seating to coat racks, the Eameses treated all design as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. ‘We don’t ‘do’ art – we solve problems,’ Charles described of their approach. ‘The extent to which you have a design style is the extent to which you have not solved the design problem.’

A 2017 exhibition at Vitra Design Museum celebrated the vast, lifelong body of work produced by the Eameses, presenting them as the most successful design partnership in history. Their designs are on display in institutions worldwide, while their purpose-built, De Stijlian home in Los Angeles is celebrated as an architectural landmark symbolic of their important career.

Jan Ekselius is a Swedish furniture designer and manufacturer, best known for his Etcetera lounge chair (1970) – one of the most iconic and seminal pieces of the decade. The chair is regarded an important part of Sweden’s design heritage and continues to be produced today.

The son of renowned designer Karl-Erik Ekselius – one of the originators of Scandinavian modern furniture – the younger Ekselius studied at Royal College of Art in London. It was here that he first designed Etcetera, initially as a prototype armchair as part of his graduate thesis. With further refinement, it was first exhibited at the Stockholm Furniture Fair in 1971, where it soon became a highly sought item of interior design furniture, synonymous with the expressive styles of the time.

Highly sculptural in form and with a striking silhouette, its construction is complex, made from a steel tube frame provided with spring-mounted elements and a continuous supported foam pad.

‘It all began when I discovered how elegantly and naturally elastic materials formed when stretched over a convex shape,’ Ekselius recalled of how the design came about. ‘When production started, we realised that the elastic fabric was difficult to use and I started to search for a replacing material. I eventually found a solution when Volvo invented their adjustable Pullmaflex back support.”

An emblem of high modernism, Etcetera is regularly represented in leading auction houses around the world, and has cemented Ekselius’ status as one of the key Swedish designers of the 20th century.

Dan Flavin is a light artist whose fluorescent geometric installations pioneered a radical new art form. A celebration of colour and space, his work is variously influenced by the tenets of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and Conceptualism, as summarised in his central belief: that ‘art is thought’.

Born in Jamaica, New York, in 1933, Flavin initially studied for the priesthood (he would later refer to his electric light assemblages as ‘icons’). Following a period in the US Air Force, he studied art in Korea and New York and began to make collages and paintings inspired by the Abstract Expressionist movement then prominent in his native city. Gradually incorporating lights onto his canvases, in 1963 he began to work with his signature fluorescent tubes and by 1968 had developed these sculptures into room-sized environments of light.

Through its emphasis on elementary forms and industrial materials, Flavin’s work adopts some of the primary principles of Minimalism. His installations were often site-specific, examining the relationship between sculptures and the rooms they inhabited, and became increasingly large in scale and complex.

Major retrospectives of Flavin’s work have been organized by the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa (1969), St. Louis Art Museum (1973), Kunsthalle Basel (1975), and Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (1989). He died in New York in 1996. Both the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin in 1999 and the Dia Foundation for the Arts in 2004 mounted major posthumous retrospectives of the artist’s work.

Isamu Kenmochi was a Japanese modernist designer whose work and legacy has received critical worldwide acclaim. A key player in the development of Japanese industrial design after World War Two, his work fused the traditional material culture of Japanese furniture with Western modernist styles.

Kenmochi graduated from the Tokyo College of Industrial Arts in 1932. He began working for the government as part of the Industrial Arts Research Institute (IARI), developing his knowledge of material and construction as part of the country’s first generation of industrial designers.

The turning point in Kenmochi’s career arrived in 1950, when he met American designer Isamu Noguchi and together they collaborated on the Bamboo Basket Chair. Made of iron and bamboo, the chair combined elements of modern American design with the warmth and tactility of traditional craft, and was the prototype of what became known as Japanese Modern. Chairs themselves were symbols of westernisation, having only arrived in the country earlier that century.

After travelling around the US, Kenmochi founded the Japan Industrial Designers Association and became instrumental in establishing a new Post-War Design. His participation at the Brussels Universal Exhibition of 1958 brought him international attention: collaborating with Kunio Maekawa, he developed a Japanese pavilion that combined ancestral Japanese architectural forms with a modern style and structure. The Pavilion earned Kenmochi the Gold Medal and stood as a symbol of his pioneering hybrid style.

Further awards including the G-Mark Prize and the Mainichi Design Prize, and today Kenmochi’s work is included in collection such as MoMA, New York.

Shiro Kuramata was part of a generation of creatives who revolutionised Japanese post-war design. An architect and industrial designer, he was celebrated worldwide for its poetic elevation of everyday objects. Steadfast in his belief that ‘Enchantment should also be considered a function,’ his work combines a surreal, minimalist and experimental vision.

Born in Tokyo in 1934, Kuramata graduated from Tokyo Polytechnic High School in 1953. After training as a cabinet maker and working for furniture producer Teikoku, he opened his own studio in 1965. There, he worked alongside important creative figures such as architect Tadao Ando, artist Jiro Takamatsu and fashion designer Issey Miyake – who approached Kuramata to design his first retail store in 1976. Defying the traditional principles of fashion presentation, his reinterpretation of the relationship between form and function introduced his revolutionary approach to a global audience.

Drawn to the possibilities offered by new technologies and industrial materials, Kuramata used materials such as acrylic, glass and steel mesh, experimenting with the effects of weight and light. Among his most famous designs include his chairs: ‘How High the Moon’ (1986), a philosophical meditation on form; and ‘Miss Blanche’, a transparent resin chair containing synthetic roses, named after the protagonist in Tennessee Williams’ play, A Streetcar Named Desire.

After meeting fellow visionary Ettore Sottsass in 1981, Kuramata was invited to join the seminal Memphis Group – a movement that sought to reinvigorate modern design with colour, magic and surprise. His works can be found in international permanent collections, including MoMA in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Upheld as one of the founding fathers of Italian modern design, Vico Magistretti was one of the country’s most highly respected designers of the last century. Steadfast throughout his career in his belief that ‘There is no excuse for bad design’, he was celebrated as a master of the art of simplicity and elegance.

Magistretti was born into a notable family of Milanese architects in 1920. During the Second World War, he fled to Switzerland where he met maestro and mentor Ernesto Nathan Rogers, a pivotal Italian architect who founded Studio BBPR and whose humanist aesthetic would inspire many of Magistretti’s later designs. Upon returning to Milan, Magistretti studied at the city’s Politecnico and joined his father’s architectural firm in 1945.

Working on modernist furniture items and architectural projects in the postwar years, Magistretti always aspired for designs of the highest artistry and concept – whether mass-produced or not. His trademark essentialism was reflected in designs that were distilled and unfussy, yet still striking and full of character. Pieces such as his breakout Carimate chair were often noted for combining rural simplicity with urban sophistication. ‘To be truly contemporary, one must always have a hand in the past and a hand in the future,’ he said.

Well-regarded in his contribution to the field of modern design, Magistretti received two Compasso d'Oro awards in 1967 and 1979, and the Gold Medal of the Chartered Society of Industrial Artists & Designers in 1986. He also held two prestigious professorships at the Royal College of Arts in London and the Domus Academy in Milan, and his work has been acquired by museums such as MoMA New York and the Victoria & Albert in London.

Angelo Mangiarotti was one of Italy’s most highly esteemed and prolific designers of the twentieth century. At the heart of his practice was an unwavering commitment to designs that respected the characteristic of his materials and responded to the needs of the consumer.

Born in Milan in 1921, Mangiarotti graduated from the Politecnico di Milano in 1948 and subsequently moved to the United States. There, he held a visiting professorship at Chicago’s Illinois Institute of Technology (he continued to teach throughout his life) and befriended famous architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (Bauhaus Director) and Konrad Wachsmann, all of whom had an influence on his lifelong body of work.

Returning to Milan, Mangiarotti opened an architectural firm with Italian architect Bruno Morasutti. The pair worked on a series of industrial, residential and cultural institutions, before Mangiarotti began to work independently in the 1960s. His inventive nature and love of craftsmanship saw him become a leading light in furniture designs that took an avant-garde sculptural form.

Comprising a range of materials, Mangiarotti’s most famous designs included his ‘Saffo’ and ‘Lesbo’ glass-blown lamps (1967) for Artemide. His signature stone and marble ‘Eros’ tables (1971) marked a milestone in furniture that could be assembled without joints or clamps; their ‘gravity joints’ enabled the legs to be held in place by the weight of the tabletop. Celebrated for their powerful sculptural presence, these pieces anticipated the robust postmodern aesthetic and continue to resonate in a contemporary interior.

Lyson Marchessault (b.1981) is a Canadian-British multidisciplinary artist based in London, where she produces work under the name of La Roche Pottery. Working predominantly with clay, nature and communities, she is inspired by ancient techniques and forms, and incorporates folklore, myth and rituals into her pieces. Part of her practice also involves ecology, fermentation and regenerative art, interested in defining a connection to the self, the earth, and living.

Marchessault works with found clay and other materials, collected by hand from various sites in the UK. This deeply intimate process grounds her work within our collective history, embedded in the layers of the earth and to our ancestors. An interconnection of plants, soil and people, each piece explores the idea of clay as an embodied memory of time.

Lyson Marchessault lives and works in London.

A pivotal member of the Belgian Surrealists, Marcel Mariën was an artist, essayist and filmmaker. Though his artistic production was wide-ranging, he is best known for his surrealist photography, which often depicted the female body with strange objects or in absurd situations.

Mariën was born in Antwerp in 1920. Inspired by René Magritte whose work he saw in an exhibition in 1937, he subsequently travelled to Brussels to work as an apprentice for the painter. He would remain a close friend of Magritte for two decades, and went on to publish the very first monograph on the artist in 1942. He was a long-term chronicler of Surrealist activities and materials, publishing a chronological record of all the movement’s writings between 1924 and 1950.

A restless and colourful character, Mariën spent time as a soldier and a sailor, and lived in New York and China where he worked as a translator. Among his attempts to challenge conventional attitudes was his 1959 film The Imitation of Cinema, which caused a scandal through its combination of religious and sexual imagery. A lifelong prankster in the vein of Marcel Duchamp, humour and wordplay remained key elements of his work. In 1980, he returned to creating surrealist photographs and became a prolific artist.

Mariën’s work is featured in collections all over the world, including the Tate Modern in London, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and MoMA in New York. He died in Brussels in 1993.

Elio Martinelli was an Italian lighting designer and founder of the Martinelli Luce lighting company, still in business today. With a background in interior design, Martinelli’s lamps were noted not just for their mid-century modern aesthetic, but also their pioneering use of materials – including, most famously, plastic.

Trained as a set designer in Florence, Martinelli developed his career in his hometown of Lucca. While designing interiors of shops, hotels and restaurant, in the 1950s he founded his eponymous brand. Characterised by a rational and expressive style, his lamps were inspired by nature and organic geometric shapes.

Harnessing materials such as methacrylate for the first time, Martinelli’s lighting designs quickly garnered praise and success. Capturing the spirit of the age, his standout pieces included the chic space-age table lamps Serpente (1965), Cobra (1968) and Foglia (1969), all designed for the Martinelli Luce brand. Gaining worldwide recognition among design circles, Matinelli was invited by the eminent Italian architect Gio Ponti to participate in the first edition of the international design exhibition, Eurodomus, in Turin in 1966 – and he went on to show at the following three editions.

Martinelli continued to work daily in his studio until his passing in 2004. His company continues to operate with his family at the helm, while many of his original models are now featured in such permanent collections as MoMA in New York. The result is that Martinelli’s original and state-of-the-art vision continues to live on.

André Masson was a French artist whose work spanned painting, sculpture, illustration, design and writing. Born at the dawn of modernism in 1896, his work has been variously tied to its associated movements, from Cubism to Expressionism - but it is with the Surrealist genre that he remains most closely associated.

After training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and a traumatic period fighting in the First World War, Masson became one of the original members of André Breton's Surrealist Group (1924-29). There, he produced automatic drawings and works that explored the effects of chance, flinging sand onto his canvases. He was also deeply inspired by nature and landscape imagery, which recurs throughout his work.

While Masson had an on-off relationship with Breton's Surrealist Group, he continued to experiment with automatism. The practice came to influence the beginnings of Abstract Expressionism, after Masson met a young Jackson Pollock while in exile in the US during the Second World War. At this time, his own work was becoming increasingly abstract characteristic of his expansive, ever-evolving oeuvre. An internationally acclaimed and exhibited artist, Mason's first major retrospective took place at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1941. Additional major solo exhibitions later followed, including presentations at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin (1964); Stedelik Museum, Amsterdam (1964); Museum of Modern Art, New York (1976); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (1976-77): Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris (1976-77): Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1981); and the Hayward Gallery, London (1987). He died in 1987 in Paris.

Despite his relatively short career in furniture design, Mathieu Matégot was one of the most renowned French designers of the 1950s. Known for his attention to the tactility of design and an avant-gardist approach to materials and shapes, he is most famous for his use of Rigitulle, a signature feature of his work.

Born in Hungary in 1910, Matégot studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Budapest. He moved to Paris in 1931 and became part of the artistic circles of the day, though his first foray into design was cut short by the Second World War. It was, however, as a prisoner of war that he was requisitioned to work in a German mechanical engineering factory, where he was assigned to metalworking – and discovered his innovative Rigitulle technique.

This defining style involved combining metal tubing with a perforated metal sheet, where Rigitulle could be bent, folded and shaped. Like sculptures in suspense, the designs juxtaposed lightness of form with the weight of metal material. The 1950s saw Matégot found his own studio, the Société Matégot, with workshops in both Paris and Casablanca, where he produced numerous iconic designs using this technique: among them the three-legged Nagasaki Chair (1954) and the Copacabana armchair (1955). It was at this time that Matégot was awarded the Grand Prix d’Honneur at the Madrid International Exposition in 1953.

Matégot abandoned furniture in 1959 to concentrate on tapestry: the second field in which he was to become a pioneer in France. Nevertheless, his work continues to inspire modern designers and forms part of the collection at the Musée des Arts décoratifs and the Centre George Pompidou.

Olivier Mourgue is a French industrial designer and artist, renowned internationally for his Pop Art and futuristic style. His work is iconic and has come to typify the 1960s modernist aesthetic, capturing the imagination of popular culture: he is perhaps best known for his Djinn collection of sofas, which were featured in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Mourgue studied comprehensively, reflected in the richness and breadth of his career. He was born in 1939 in Paris, where he obtained a degree in both Industrial Design from École Boulle and in Furniture Design from the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs.

After graduating in 1960, Mourgue quickly became a pioneer in sculptural furniture design, particularly in seating. His designs were brightly-coloured, flexible and practical: he created removable covers that could be changed to give his pieces new identities. His Djinn series (1965) was the result of a collaboration with Airborne International, and consisted of jersey fabric stretched over structural steel frames, filled with polyether foam to create an anthropomorphic, alien-like modular form. The name derived from the genie in Arabian fairytales that could assume human or animal form.

Mourgue found continued success after launching his own studio in 1966, and in 1968 won the AID International Design Award for his Cubique Chair. He increasingly devoted himself to painting and in 1976 became a Professor in the School of Fine Arts in Brest. His pieces can be found at institutions such as the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and the MoMa in New-York.

Verner Panton was one of Denmark’s most influential furniture and interior designers of the 20th century. Though working at the forefront of modernism, his brightly coloured and futuristic pieces – many of which embraced new materials – marked a radical departure from classical modern design and came to epitomise 1960s innovation.

Born on the island of Funen in 1926, Panton studied architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Upon graduating in 1951, he served as an apprentice to Functionalist designer Arne Jacobsen, assisting with the execution of the iconic Ant Chair. Though inspired by Jacobsen’s organic style, he soon established his own avant-garde aesthetic characterised by bold colours and geometric shapes.

Panton brought his experimental and ebullient sensibility to a range of products, from lamps to textiles – but his chair pieces were his most pioneering. His Cone Chair and Heart Chair, both made of upholstered bent sheet metal, revolutionised the structure of a chair, while his Peacock chair defined the Pop style for which his designs became loved world-over. Trialling materials such as polyurethane foam and steel-wire framing, his 1960 stacking Panton Chair was the first to ever be produced from a single piece of moulded plastic.

As Panton’s designs grew in scope, the early 1970s saw him develop all-encompassing room environments composed of fluid-formed modular seating made of foam and metal wire. He designed numerous exhibitions, and many of his best-loved furniture models are still in production today, at Vitra among other design houses.

Gianni Pareschi is an Italian industrial designer of the post-war period, whose work is synonymous with the aesthetic shifts in mid-century design. Working to the mantra that ‘Quality is forever’, his successful international career is ongoing, and many of his pieces belong in museum collections.

Born in Milan in 1940, where he graduated from the city’s Polytecnico in 1965, Pareschi initially aligned himself with the anti-design movement that was growing in momentum around Italy at the time. Opposed to the growing symbiosis between design and industry, Pareschi was one of numerous artists who was influenced by new radical expressions in art, politics and youth culture, encouraged to experiment with forms, symbols and connotations. In the late 1960s, he was part of Gruppo G14 alongside Umberto Orsoni and Gianfranco Fachetti, among others, and while most of their designs remained as prototypes, Pareschi’s later eye-catching designs reflect their influence. He later worked on the reorganisation of the ADI (Association of Industrial Design), helping to reshape the principles of design theory following his involvement during this period.

The 1970s saw Pareschi achieve success with his armchairs – Fiocco, Libro and Armadillo – characterised by unusual structural systems and now part of the collection at MoMA. He later co-founded the GP&CO studio in 1984 where he continues to work on industrial and domestic design projects, together with his son Mattia.

Gaetano Pesce is one of the reigning pioneers of twentieth-century Italian design, architecture and urban planning. Made across a prolific and influential career spanning five decades, his creative, innovative and ambitious body of work is testament to his simple guiding philosophy: ‘Design is a very powerful form of communication, a very important form of expression. In my opinion, it is an art.’ Despite his anti-establishments values, Pesce is regarded as one of the most progressive and visionary designers.

Born in La Spezia, Italy in 1939, Pesce studied architecture at the University of Venice, graduating in 1963. Early on he participated in Gruppo N., an early collective concerned with the psychological realisation of design. From here sprang Pesce’s interest in the function and form of objects from the perspective of human emotion and environment, which has remained at the core of each of his design and architectural projects.

From his iconic feminist Up chair, to his Organic building in Osaka, Japan, Pesce’s work fuses the poetic and the political. His industrial work for companies such as Cassina, B&B Italia and Vitra re-assert design as a social and cultural experience – of art as a creative product responding to the needs of our time. Drawn to contemporary materials such as resin, foam and plastic, he is most recently known for his work with casting techniques used to create objects such as the Fish Design series.

Still a leading light for young designers today, the socio-political element of Pesce’s work has gained a new significance in the 21st-century age of activism. 

One of the most influential Italian designers of the twentieth century, Giancarlo Piretti’s chair designs – for which he is most celebrated – have sold millions worldwide.

Born in Bologna in 1940, Piretti initially obtained a teaching degree in drawing and taught interior design at the city’s Art Institute from 1963 to 1970. While there, he also joined Castelli as a designer, creating home and office furnishings that established the Italian design company as a global front-runner in its field.

Piretti’s most well-known piece is the folding Plia chair. The design was first unveiled at the Fiera del Mobile in Milan in 1967 as ‘The symbol of a new era focused on plastic’. Its material combinations of a steel and polypropylene frame, ‘three-disc hinge’ and elegant functionality revolutionised the concept of a folding chair. With sales upward of seven million, Plia has garnered a cult popularity and is now recognised as a significant cornerstone of post-war Italian modern design – nowadays enjoying centre stage in MoMA NY’s design department.

Piretti’s designs have made a continued impact; after twelve years spent at Castelli, he worked with Emilio Ambasz on further award-winning designs including two series of ergonomic seating systems. In 1988, he introduced his Piretti Collection at the NeoCon in Chicago, which featured chairs with patented mechanisms that could be adjusted to the weight of the user. The Collection amassed awards from the UBD, the ASID, the Compasso d'Oro and the G-Mark.

Today, Piretti continues to bring his skill to the world of design; he lives and works in Bologna with his son, the designer Alessandro Piretti.

Alain Richard is a 20th-century French designer celebrated for his high-value modernist furniture. Highly regarded for his pursuit of perfection, his pieces are characterised by their elegant sobriety and he is often referred to as one of ‘the first French designers’.

Richard was born in Bretagne in 1926. He graduated from the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in 1949, initially working for his teacher, the famed designer René Gabriel, before founding his own design studio with his wife in 1952. Together they worked on high-profile architectural design projects, including Orly airport, Banque de France, and Crédit Agricole.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, Richard produced a prolific body of furniture designs, including chairs, lamps and coffee tables. His pieces are marked out by a sophistication and simplicity of colour, shape and material, and were manufactured with new post-war technology for mass production. Richard also embraced new and emerging materials such as laminates and tubular steel.

Later in his career, Richard specialised in interior design for museums, founding his own agency focused on large-scale work: he was one of the few French architects to work on major architectural projects.

The success of Richard's career can be measured by his many awards, including the grand prize of the Triennale of Milan in 1954, the Universal Exhibition of 1958 and the René Gabriel prize in 1964. He returned to ENSAD – his alma mater – to teach, imparting his authority on the next generation of creatives.

Husband-and-wife duo Tobia and Afra Scarpa are award-winning postmodern Italian architects and designers. With a legacy of work included in displays at MoMA and the Louvre Museum, their sophisticated designs – comprising architecture as well as everyday household items and furniture – continue to attract new generations of admirers and collectors in the 21st century.

Born in 1935 and 1937, respectively, Tobia and Afra both graduated from the Venice Insititute of Architecture in 1969. They went on to become known as one of the most successful professional partnerships in the field of design, together creating works for companies such as Cassina, Knoll and B&B Italia.

Rather than following specific trends, the duo were celebrated for ‘pursuing the ideal of a long-lasting, properly made product.’ Their creations are notable for embracing the technical and aesthetic possibilities of material: seminal designs include the 1960 Bastiano collection for Gavina – consisting of a sofa, lounge chair and tables – that epitomised the Scarpa values of elegance twinned with comfort.

Other innovations included the 1966 Coronado Armchair series for B&B Italia, among the first furniture to use the cold-moulded foaming process, and the 1973 Papillon Lamp for Flos, one of the first lighting designs to use halogen technology. For the iconic design of their Soriano armchair (1970), the duo were also awarded the Compasso d’Oro.

From 1960 the Scarpas also worked closely with Benetton. They were responsible for the company’s image worldwide, designing its first textile factory in Treviso as well its office interiors internationally – further evidence of the duo’s versatility and wide-reaching influence.

Gaetano Sciolari was an Italian designer and entrepreneur, internationally celebrated for his captivating mid-century modern lighting designs. A talented and prolific designer, he achieved success with his eponymous family brand as the first Italian lighting manufacturing company in the United States.

Sciolari graduated in architecture in 1927. While initially planning to pursue a career in cinema, the death of his father 1949 suddenly placed him in charge of the family’s lighting company – which he soon turned into an international enterprise. A talented creator as well as a businessman, he began designing lamps for legendary manufacturers such as Stilnovo, Boulanger and Stilkronen.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, Sciolari was in high demand. Where most postwar Italian designers were experimenting with new materials (to much acclaim), Sciolari remained drawn to more traditional expressions – for example employing deco-style materials such as glass, perspex and brass, blended with modernist geometrical patterns.

Sophisticated, sculptural and futuristic, his aesthetic was variously influenced by a range of art movements, from cubism to minimalism. As tastes began to shift away from strict modernism and more towards a crafted, decorative and ‘space age’ style (epitomised by his series of multi-light chandeliers) his designs became increasingly popular. They often featured prominently in popular television and film owing to their luxurious and futuristic appearance, linking Sciolari back to his early passion for film.

A mark of his contribution to the field, Sciolari was the founder and first president of the trade association of Italian manufacturers of lighting fixtures. Since passing away in 1994, his stylish designs remain highly sought-after and collectable.

With an oeuvre spanning furniture, jewellery, glass, lighting and home furniture – as well as countless architectural projects – Ettore Sottsass occupies a towering place in Italian design history. As the founder of the pivotal Memphis movement, a postmodern design collective, his eclectic style continues to influence the field of design.

Sottsass was born in Innsbruck and raised in Turin, where he studied at the city’s Politecnico. Following a period serving in the Italian military, he opened his own architecture and design firm in Milan. While his architect father (also named Ettore Sottsass) was part of the modernist architecture group Movimento Italiano per l'Architectura Razionale (MIAR), the young Ettore took a stance against the fashion for pure functionalism. His work was characterised by statement pieces, bright colours and a decorative aesthetic that associated him with the pop culture movement: ‘Design should also be sensual and exciting,’ he exclaimed. The result was the Memphis movement, which liberated his contemporaries from the dry rationalism then dominating the field and offered a more fluid, conceptual approach to design.

Sottsass often worked with glass and ceramics, drawn to the mystery of the mediums: ‘one doesn’t really know what goes into the furnace.’ His pieces are celebrated for their energy and flamboyant aesthetic, though the designer is arguably best known for his 1969 Valentine typewriter: a symbol, like much of Sottsass’ work, of radical 60s counterculture in an age of mass production.

Sottsass’ pieces are now housed worldwide at institutions such as the Design Museum in London and MoMA in New York, and his architectural practice and design consultancy, Sottsass Associati, continues to operate in London and Milan.

Arguably the best-known Spanish artist to emerge in the period following World War Two, Antoni Tàpies was a Catalonian painter, sculptor and art theorist. He was associated with a variety of movements throughout his career, but became a particular forerunner of Art Informel.

Born in Barcelona in 1923, Tàpies was a self-taught artist who abandoned his law studies in order to paint. Influenced by artists such as Paul Klee and Joan Miró, in 1948 he was one of the co-founders of the first Post-War Movement in Spain. Known as Dau al Set (‘Seventh Side of the Dice’), it was connected with earlier movements in Europe such as Surrealism and Dadaism. He also became inspired by Eastern philosophy, as well as the writings of Sartres.

Tàpies came to develop a signature style that was related to Art Informel. Focused on the materials of art making, he was interested in the transformative qualities of matter, incorporating earth, stone, marble dust, clay and other found objects into his work. These mixed media assemblages are considered his most original contribution to art, and he was one of the first to create serious art in this way.

In 1990, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies opened in Barcelona, and three years later he represented Spain at the Venice Biennale with Cristina Iglesias, where his installation was awarded the Golden Lion. A major international retrospective of his work was organized by the Museu d’art contemporani de Barcelona, which travelled all over the world in 2004. He died in Barcelona in 2012.

Juliette Teste (b. 1986) is a contemporary ceramicist based in Paris. Her practice is informed by her training in applied arts at Ecole Duperré, drawing from her knowledge of styles, periods and genres to create pieces that feel as innovative as they are timeless. Whether from Chinese culture or the aesthetic of Greek ruins, Teste amalgamates different forms and influences, often instinctively and playfully. This results in striking, experimental forms that are filled with historical allusion and yet unrestrained by formal conventions.

Teste’s practice reflects her fascination for the relationship between objects and time: how an antique can retain the same freshness as on the day of its creation. She often creates pieces that are related to the idea of the rite, of celebration, of the moment in time. Harnessing the power of colour – a central component in her process – Teste also builds her own palettes of enamels. From muted ashy tones to pastels and faux noirs, she is interested in their alchemical qualities.

Celli Tognon was an architecture and design studio founded in Trieste in 1964. The co-founders of the studio were brothers Carlo Celli (b. 1936) and Luciano Celli (b. 1940), and Dario Tognon (b. 1936), all of whom studied and graduated from Venice between the years of 1963-64.

A practice of international acclaim, Celli Tognon was involved in numerous high-profile architectural projects. These included the Nereo Rocco stadium in Trieste, the IACP district in Rozzol Melara and the church of San Marco at the Campanelle. They also participated in several international competitions, including the Guggenheim Museum in Venice, the Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition in Tokyo, and Les Halles in Paris.

In their work in industrial design, the studio also collaborated with companies such as Artemide, Stilnovo and ICF, producing lighting fixtures and furniture.

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Disclaimer: vintage objects may show imperfections, signs of wear and tear. Please note that there may be variations from the images displayed. Any issues or imperfections beyond reasonable expectation will be made clear in the listing.

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