GG2003.5.1

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 78; Larghezza: 40; Profondità: 47

tubolare metallico e compensato

The partnership between architect and painter Gabriele Mucchi and industrialist Emilio Pino represents an exemplary case in the context of nascent Italian proto design in the interwar years. In fact, Mucchi designed a series of steel tube seats for the Parabiago metal furniture company, creating successful models, such as the S.5 stackable chair, used by several architects for their interior designs. This was the case with Luigi Carlo Daneri, who used several models of tubular metal chairs and armchairs for the furnishings of his Rinaldo Piaggio mountain colony in Santo Stefano d'Aveto (1939). Tubular metal and plywood chair with simple, geometric lines.

GG1999.3

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 83; Larghezza: 60; Profondità: 69

tubolare metallico e strisce di cuoio intrecciate

The organicist approach that Vietti applied to the design of the curved laminated plywood armchairs, created for the New Maritime Station in Genoa, was also adapted by the Lombard architect for a subsequent model of armchair, in which the tubular metal frame was combined, in keeping with a characteristic feature of his design at the time, with a woven covering made of natural material such as leather. Armchair with tubular metal frame covered with interwoven leather strips.

87.849.5.1

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 210; Larghezza: 157

olio su tavola

Prampolini's aeror-portrait represents the posthumous glorification of Italo Balbo: an early Fascist, undersecretary of the National Economy (1925-1926), undersecretary and then minister of aeronautics (1929-1933), “hero of the air” as the leader of the two transatlantic flights to Rio de Janeiro (1930) and Chicago (1933), and finally from 1934 governor of Libya. At the outbreak of war Balbo took command of Libya's armed forces, but died prematurely in the skies over Tobruk, when his plane was shot down by mistake by Italian anti-aircraft fire. The painting was exhibited at the XXIII International Biennial Art Exhibition in Venice in 1942. Oil on panel depicting Italo Balbo as a pilot aboard a futuristic aircraft in flames.

GX1993.204

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 67; Larghezza: 53; Profondità: 48

buxus

The building and interior furnishings designed in Turin between 1928 and 1929 by Giuseppe Pagano Pogatschnig and Gino Levi Montalcini for the SALPA offices of the Turin industrialist and collector Riccardo Gualino were considered at the time to be “one of the first realisations in Italy of so-called rational architecture”. This work, a true monument to modern managerial ideology, reflected - in its radical linguistic simplification, functional distribution of space and interaction between architecture and furnishings - an innovative and efficient model of work organisation. Manufactured by the Turin-based company FIP, Salpa's office furniture presented a wide variety of types, including sixty-seven models of tables, desks, chairs, armchairs, shelves, telephone stands, drawer units, filing cabinets, counters and filing cabinets. The ductile and elegant material that covered these furnishings was buxus, produced from the mid-1920s at the Piedmontese Giacomo Bosso paper mills and first used for the veneer of the furniture presented at the 1928 Turin Exposition, within the rationalist-oriented flat of the Novatori Architects' group. The consecration of this material was offered by the Gualino office furniture project which, however, also highlighted its intrinsic contradiction: in spite of its industrial plant production vocation, buxus was in fact regularly confronted with an elaborate handcrafted installation process. Rationalist-style armchair veneered in buxus.

GD1993.5.1-6.1

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 90; Diametro: 44; Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 90; Larghezza: 43; Profondità: 42,3

legno di abete e compensato dipinti all'anilina

This pair of chairs was part of a set of furniture designed by architect Marcello Piacentini for the home of art critic Margherita Sarfatti's daughter, Fiammetta, on the occasion of her marriage to Count Livio Gaetani. This rare creation of private furniture by the famous architect of the regime reveals, in its rigorous, simplified and undecorated lines, an inspiration close to the déco taste and design solutions of Futurist furniture. Two bright red chairs made of fir wood and plywood painted with aniline, a chemical compound used in the preparation of numerous dyes.

GX1993.67a-b

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 220; Larghezza: 204; Profondità: 5

legno di rovere

The Luigi Brusotti company based in Via Solari in Milan was active since the mid-19th century in the manufacture of engraved glass, lamps and glass furniture and, after suffering extensive damage during the Second World War, closed its doors in 1960. The activity, handed down from the founder Luigi to his son Ambrogio, focused mainly on the creation of unique pieces, as in the case of this sliding door, the decoration of which was designed in 1937, in memory of her honeymoon trip to Africa, by the client herself, Maria Rosa Mocchetti, for the living room of her house in Legnano, furnished in 20th century style with glass coffee tables made by Brusotti. Stained glass door with oak frame and worked metal handles. The glass, in pinkish tones, is decorated with stylised figures of African animals and silhouettes of trees.

GG2018.7

Unità di misura: UNR

argento

Arrigo Finzi's silverware bearing the “Sant'Elia” mark, deposited on October 16, 1933, although starting out with a production inspired by the designs of the futurist Antonio Sant'Elia, with whom the Milanese silversmith had become acquainted in 1909 and with whom he had forged a relationship of friendship and artistic collaboration, dramatically interrupted by the young architect's untimely death on the front of World War I, more than to the Futurist language, however, they distinguished themselves, through the essentiality and delicacy of their forms, by their evident adherence to the expressive instances of the Deco taste, with tangencies both with contemporary Lombard production and with emerging Central European trends. Silver centerpiece in the shape of a wine cup. The spiral-worked handles end with a bunch of grapes.

GG2018.11a-e

Unità di misura: UNR

metallo argentato

One of the most qualifying aspects of the autarkic period was the production of new materials, especially in the fields of construction, furniture and fashion. Among the metals was alpacca-an alloy of copper, zinc and nickel, known as German silver-used by the Milan branch of Krupp-Società Anonima Italiana Metalli for a series of tableware designed by Gio Ponti, or Metargent, the brand under which in the early 1930s the Milanese silversmith Arrigo Finzi began initialing objects related to the sports sector and with which he also marked his 1940-1941 Autarchy service. Metargent, a highly silver-plated, engraving-unalterable off-white metal, already used for sports cups that in the titles themselves recalled the linguistic repertoire and slogans of Fascist propaganda, thus became, in the midst of the autarky campaign, a material suitable for supporting the policy of economic self-sufficiency promoted by the regime. Metal tea set consisting of cup, teapot, milk jug and sugar bowl.

GD1994.71.1-17

Unità di misura: UNR

porcellana

Having graduated as an architect from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in 1923, Guido Andlovitz was hired as a consultant by the Società Ceramica Italiana of Laveno and became its artistic director in 1927: a position he would hold for about forty years. Alongside ceramic production, he was also involved in the design of furnishings, as in the case of the boudoir presented at the Fifth Milan Triennale in 1933, where an all-white version of this service was on display, whose trademark with the words “Verbano-Laveno” indicated that it was “ dinnerware porcelain.” Porcelain coffee service consisting of two cups with saucer, teapot, milk jug, and sugar bowl; the pieces are decorated with a red and black line pattern.

MWJ111

Unità di misura: UNR

porcellana

Within the heated debate on the art industry that inflamed the Italian research context between the 1920s and 1930s, Ponti's ceramics for Richard Ginori stood out, despite their modern formal approach, for a peculiar stylistic syncretism imbued with references to remote eras and classicism, as in the case of the “Barbara” service, made in different color versions and with different decorations. Coffee service consisting of coffee pot, sugar bowl and creamer. The pieces are made of blue and white painted porcelain with gold details.