The Fifties are Italy's golden decade as it recovers from the disasters of war. Industry and creativity are part of a common project aimed at consolidating the trust that will lead to the economic boom in the following decade. The Italian design in this decade it emerges as an entrepreneurial reality that combines artisan excellence and mass production with imagination.
Franco Albini he was the architect of lightness, of firm, simple, highly correct lines. He used to say: “It is the voids that need to be built, since air and light are the building materials”. There library Lb7 made for Poggi in 1957 in rosewood and painted aluminum, it is an example of restraint and elegance, a counterpoint between form and space, which still today enchants with its modern classicism (lot 517 estimate 3.500 - 4.000).
Umberto Nordio in his long career as an architect and designer was able to combine a very refined cult for the ornamental data of an academic matrix with artisanal attention to details and materials that make his bourgeois functionalism, if not a 'return', a continuity with the 'profession of doing.
An example comes from a pair of white high-backed armchairs from 1949 for the first-class ballroom of the ocean liner “Conte Biancamano” Launched in 1925, in 1948 she underwent major modernization works in the Monfalcone Shipyards. Painters such as Massimo Campigli, Mario Sironi, Roberto Crippa, Edina Altara collaborated in the rearrangement; Gustav Pulitzer and Giò Ponti while the sculptures were the work of Marcello Mascherini. Among the sculptures, the one on the large ceiling that adorned the ballroom depicting the myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece.
Other important protagonists are the designers Ico and Luisa Parisi, who had already founded the 'La Ruota' studio in 1947 for the design of architecture and furnishings. A dressing table with enamel on copper top made for Azucena, executed by De Poli, painter Pietro Zuffi, presented in the exhibition on Italian design from New York of 1954 will be hesitated with an estimate of 5.000 – 6.000
euro.
Finally, a refined chest of drawers in beech wood and brass by Gio Ponti – superb interpreter of flexibility of creative flair for serial production – made in the 50s for Giordano Chiesa (lot 568 estimate 12.000 – 14.000 euros). And again, Carlo Scarpa, Achille Castiglioni, Gianfranco Frattini, Piero Ambrosetti and companies such as: Venini, Cassina etc.
Catalog with two auction sessions with 400 lots, Thursday 19 July 2014.
