Italian Design, a matter of style

Italian Design, a matter of style

Design isn’t purely drawing, it is industrial planning. In time, moreover, the term gained wider meanings, where style and utility, beauty and industry, creativity and functionality do meet. In the meantime, the concept of art itself evolves, towards a wider-range and more manifold utilization. After all, with the industrial revolution, even the beauty can be replicated, mass produced and above all become an object of everyday use. The idea of art goes beyond the artisan sphere, and it contaminates with success into the vast production process. So it was that, in the twentieth century, rose that Italian Style, which would impose on the world for decades.

In the fifties, after World War II, style and customs were affected by a new idea of elegance and originality. Hollywoodian and baroque cars came from America, with showy colours and a style, which appeared flashy to the Europeans. At our place it was still time for the two wheels: scooters like Vespa and Lambretta, often prepared in short time using war surpluses were appreciated for their agility in style and in control. As for the cars, here’s the Topolino, the Seicento, the Cinquecento: small, handy, a smooth design and a polished style. In a word: beautiful. Coachbuilders like Ghia, Bertone and Pinin Farina marked the triumph of the Italian car of those years, from the cheap runabout to the luxurious “Gran Turismo“, as they used to say.

In the meanwhile, during the decade fifties-sixties, a new and catching vogue spread over objects of everyday use, from furnishing to household appliances. Today a prototype of the legendary Lettera 22 Olivetti is on display at the Modern Art Museum in New York. But who forgets the pieces of furniture by Kartell, or Artemide lamps? And the immortal Eclisse of Magistretti, in 1967. The industrial design is entitled with important names, as the architects Gio Ponti and Gae Aulenti, while the technologic society democratically merges high culture and mass consumption. And in the same time, tight and strained lines prevail from architecture to kitchen or office utensils, inspired by a rationalistic order, absolutely free from frills and trinkets.

A few know that the revolutionary designs of Citroen DS and 2CV are works of a brilliant Italian model maker and sculptor: Flaminio Bertoni. From Brionvega appliances to the legendary beige Gelosino, we are dealing with somewhat precious and already revalued articles, representing the modern antique collecting of our times. Happy and farseeing the one who kept those objects.

Today Turin is the World Capital for Design 2008, while Murano’s lamps by Andromeda are about to enlighten the Olympic nights of Peking. Then it is worth to think over this Italian taste for the beauty, characterized by simplicity and soft elegance, just when, from other ways, seem to reappear tendencies for mawkish frippery and superfluous forms. But this is another story.