Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
106
Long fixated on France, America, and Scandinavia, 20th-century design collectors today are now giving well-deserved attention to Italy By William L. Hamilton
Ecco!
Gio PontiA custom coffee table made in 1954 for Villa Arreaza, Caracas, made an appearance at the December 2011 Important Design sale at Wright,
where it brought $170,500 against an estimate of $50–70,000.
Wr
igh
t, c
hic
ag
o.
op
po
sit
e,
fr
om
to
p:
ch
ris
tie
’s;
fiv
e i
ma
ge
s,
ph
ill
ips
art+auction april 2013 | blouinartinfo.com
Take a Look at Italian Design!
carlo Mollino With an estimate of $150,000 to $200,000, this unique oak- and-glass table, 1949, for the
Casa Orengo catapulted to a record for the designer at Christie’s New York in 2005 when it
sold for $3,824,000.
ettore sottsassThe multicolored glazed ceramic
Flavia, a monumental set of five totems, designed in 1964 and
executed ca. 1995, came to a finish at $97,000 on a $70,000-
to-$80,000 estimate at Phillips de Pury & Company in 2007.
107
Ecco!
blouinartinfo.com | april 2013 art+auction
Take a Look at Italian Design!
art+auction april 2013 | blouinartinfo.com
Wr
igh
t
hat if there were a secret stash in the collecting market for 20th-century design? A vast, undiscovered hoard of material? As it happens, there is, and it is Italian design. “It’s an Aladdin’s cave,” says Domenico Raimondo, the London-based specialist employed by Phillips auction house since 2007.
After years of playing second fiddle to the French, Italian 20th-century design is now coming to light in
the maturing collecting market. And what is appearing is just the tip of the iceberg. To the fashionable—but oh-so-familiar—names like Prouvé and Perriand, add Gio Ponti, Max Ingrand, Giuseppe Terragni, Gino Sarfatti, Carlo Mollino, and Ettore Sottsass. In addition to well- established figures like Carlo Scarpa and Guido Gamboni in glass and ceramics, respectively, there are dozens more in every category of collecting from the 1930s to the 1980s. Italian design is having its momento, and it represents perhaps the last great opportunity for 20th-century design collectors at every price point in the market.
Early leaders in the field, like Wright, the Chicago auction house, and Phillips, in New York and London, are seeing their enthusiasm pay off. Richard Wright recalls important lots of Italian design going unsold 13 years ago, when he founded the business. Now he holds dedicated Italian sales, and the latest—“Italian Masterworks,” this past December—
wearned $1.2 million, topping its presale estimate by 20 per- cent. Wright holds the auction record for Ponti, Italy’s preeminent architect and designer of the last century; it was set in 2007 when a suite of furniture designed for the 9th Milan Triennale in 1951 brought $324,000. “It’s not an emerging field now; it’s a serious field,” Wright says. “What’s important is becoming clearer.”
Alex Heminway, director of the design department at Phillips in New York, says that “Italian design is driving our department’s bottom line,” and notes that the category represented 30 percent of the design department’s sales last year, which he describes as the “best year” ever. (Phillips would not release a sales total.)
So where has it been all these years? And why is it coming to light now? Experts say the material has been buried by igno-rance—a lack of research, exhibitions, and cataloguing—and by a scanty track record of sales at auction. Also, the market has been largely domestic: Italians collect Italian design but have done little to publicize it. And Italy lacks the network of dealers and auctioneers in antiques and design that has worked so systematically for the French, who aggressively document pieces, pursue international buyers at fairs, and support and protect prices, particularly in emerging, malleable markets like 20th-century design.
There have been notable breakouts, to be sure. A 1949 oak- and-glass table by Mollino, a classic if ordinary example of his work, sold at Christie’s New York in 2005 for $3,824,000 (est. $150–200,000) and held the auction record for
ico and luisa Parisi
The March Modern Design auction at Wright featured this
Italian walnut three-seat sofa, 1946, reupholstered in a Madeline
Weinrib fabric, with an estimate of $10,000 to $15,000.
108
archizooM associati
From one of several collectives that took a playful, Pop-inflected
approach to design in the 1970s, the Safari sofa, ca. 1970,
took $10,000 at the Important 20th-Century Design sale at
Sotheby’s New York in June 2010.
fr
om
to
p:
so
th
eb
y’s
; c
as
at
i g
al
le
ry,
ch
ica
go
109
20th-century design until 2009, when an Eileen Gray armchair sold for $28.3 million in the Yves Saint Laurent sale at Christie’s in Paris. Mollino seems certifiably blue-chip in the market: A smaller table sold at Christie’s New York in 2008 for $1,314,500 (est. $800,000–1.2 million).
But the enormous body of work that is 20th-century Italian design, below its heady high spots, is only now taking shape in a way that is comprehensible for collectors. Exhibitions and publications are providing authoritative information. Last November Milan’s Triennale Design Museum organized a retrospective (nearly 700 designs) of Sarfatti, one of Italy’s most resourceful and prolific lighting designers. Writer Franco Deboni recently published Fontana Arte: Giò Ponti, Pietro Chiesa, Max Ingrand (available in the United States exclusively through Bernd Goeckler Antiques, a New York gallery that emphasizes Italian design), which examines the innovative company founded by Ponti, with Chiesa as artistic director, in 1932 as a division of manufacturer Luigi Fontana’s glassworks. Ingrand served as Fontana Arte’s design director from 1954 to 1964 and is highly collectible today. An illuminated mirror he created during that period sold at Sotheby’s New York in December 2012 for $80,500 (est. $35–50,000).
Research has in turn led to growing accessibility. In January the retail antiques and design website 1stdibs—popular with interior designers, who are a gathering force in the 20th-century design market—added search tools for Italian design to a menu that already included categories like “English Country House” and “Scandinavian Modern.” The tools include a city search for dealers in Rome, Milan, and Florence; an alphabetical guide to designers; and a curated collection of Italian design for one-stop shoppers.
Even the French are coming on board. Galerie Kreo, a Design Miami regular and an influential venue for new designers in Paris, is selling editioned work by Andrea Branzi, Alessandro Mendini, and Sottsass, three founders
blouinartinfo.com | april 2013 art+auction
Vittoriano ViGano The prominent architect and
onetime assistant to Gio Ponti created this fine example of
architectural Italian design, a floor lamp of enameled metal, in
1960. Casati Gallery, in Chicago, priced it this year at $8,500.
art+auction april 2013 | blouinartinfo.com
110
fr
om
to
p:
be
rn
d g
oe
ck
le
r a
nt
iqu
es
, n
eW
yo
rk
; W
rig
ht
of the Memphis Group, the provocative postmodern movement that launched in 1981 and disbanded in 1988.
There is abundant opportunity for collectors, in no small part because of the unusual surfeit of high-quality design produced in Italy during the last century, particularly after World War II. Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, observes in the museum’s 2008 publication Italian Design that creative design in Italy has taken place within a manufac-turing culture. Industry collaborated with and employed the nation’s architectural and artistic elite. Ponti, for example, who in the early 1950s was the principal designer of the 32- story Pirelli Tower in Milan—literally a pinnacle of postwar architecture in Italy—also designed tabletop ceramics for Richard-Ginori, dining chairs for Cassina, and a multitude of other household items. His Polsino lamp, designed in 1969 for Guzzini, sold in Wright’s Italian Masterworks auction last December for $5,000 (est. $2,000–3,000), making it a very affordable piece by the master.
The history of Italian design, Stefano Casciani points out in his 2008 book Design in Italia, is the history of artisanal goods being transformed into industrial products. For collectors, even mass-produced items are satisfying in both concept and manufacture. In many cases, Italian design can be collected “in reverse”—by company rather than by designer. Zanotta, for example, the furniture design house founded in 1954, has worked with Mollino, Branzi, Sottsass, and, more recently, Arik Levy and Ross Lovegrove.
“There are a lot of one-hit wonders,” says Paul Donzella, a New York specialist dealer; looking at a particular company closely would best reveal them.
At Phillips, Raimondo suggests another approach to collecting: Concentrate on a well-defined or distinguished category, like lighting. Italian design is brilliant—few dispute its prominence in the world of lighting design during the second half of the 20th century. Italian lighting, as contemporary-looking as it comes, is also technologically progressive. Designers like Sarfatti, Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, and Vico Magistretti often arrived at form through the function of new types of tubes and bulbs.
The most useful development in the secondary market for Italian design has been the emergence of a template for collecting. During the past 10 years, the field has come to be divided into three periods: the 1930s through the 1950s, with material usually created as custom commis-sions for private clients; the 1960s and 1970s, the heyday of international recognition and designer–manufacturer collaborations; and the late 1970s through the 1980s, commonly called the postmodern period.
According to specialists Ugo Alfano Casati, owner of Casati Gallery, in Chicago, and Brian Kish, a New York dealer, the relative rarity of values from the early period and the perception that prices will hold have attracted serious collectors to the 20th-century Italian arena. The aesthetic during these years ranges from the rationalist designs of Ponti, Terragni, and Franco Albini to the anthropomorphic work of Mollino and Ico and Luisa Parisi.
James Zemaitis, senior vice president for 20th-century design at Sotheby’s New York, says “the sweet spots are early prewar and early postwar.” The Italian government seems to
Italian design is driving our department’s bottom line.—Alex Heminway, Phillips
❝ ❝
iGnazio GardellaA bookcase, ca. 1955, features
crisply articulated geometry. The modular system, actually three
identical units, is priced at $110,000 from Bernd Goeckler
Antiques, of New York.
Gino sarfatti A table lamp of enameled
steel and enameled aluminum from 1966 lit at $6,750, outshining a $3,000-to-$5,000 estimate
in a 2009 sale at Wright.
110
be in agreement. Last October, Christie’s London was forced to cancel the sale of an important group of furniture created by Mollino in 1953 for an Alpine villa he had designed. Italian authorities—perhaps impressed by Christie’s marketing of the material as “unique”—withdrew the export license on the eve of the auction. Since much of the prime material remains in the country, recognition of Italian design at the high end of the market could, paradoxically, be a potential problem for it.
Simon Andrews, international specialist for 20th-century decorative arts and design at Christie’s, believes the savvy collector will start to look at material from the middle period. “I’m certain interest will shift to the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s,” Andrews says, citing designers like Sottsass, who began working in the late 1940s. Prices have risen for his ceramics and glass: A 1963 ceramic vase sold at Christie’s New York in 2010 for $82,900 (est. $20–30,000). Andrews says he believes Sottsass’s furniture design through the 1970s to be undervalued. A Superbox cabinet, circa 1968, sold at Sotheby’s in 2011 for $74,500 (est. $60–80,000).
Condition is a consideration. During the 1960s and 1970s, Italian manufacturers experimented with innovative materials and technologies, notably new synthetic foams and plastics. The bold shapes and colors they made possible have not survived as gracefully—or as restorably—as those executed in metal or wood. Andrews advises
GiusePPe terraGni Brian Kish Gallery showed large
and small dressers from a $400,000, six-piece suite of bedroom
furnishings designed in 1936–37, from Casa Stecchini, in Como. Fashioned from padauk
wood, with bronze hardware and iron legs wrapped in black Bakelite with chromed steel feet, the interiors
are silvered bird’s-eye maple lined with white Bakelite.
Max inGrandManufactured by Fontana Arte, an illuminated mirror with wall
shelf (mirrored glass, brass, and painted metal), ca. 1958, outdid
its $35,000-to-$50,000 estimate to take $80,500 at
Sotheby’s in December 2012.
111
blouinartinfo.com | april 2013 art+auction
fr
om
to
p:
so
th
eb
y’s
; b
ria
n k
ish
, n
eW
yo
rk
collectors to be selective but not afraid. “There’s the white paint on Josef Hoffmann furniture,” he says, by way of comparison. “Conservation issues will always be there.”
The triumphant middle period of Italian design came to a turbulent conclusion. In a climate of pervasive protest, and perhaps in reaction to their own role in establishing the tenets of “good design,” some Italian designers began to rebel in the late 1960s. They occupied Milan’s Triennale building in 1968, delaying by a month the opening of its annual design exhibition. By the 1970s new collectives like Archizoom Associati, Superstudio, and UFO were presenting work littered with Pop references and kitschy features and marked by a cheeky attitude toward consumerist “good taste.” The design press, including influential magazines like Domus, founded by Ponti in 1928, called the movement “anti-design.” Adventurous collectors today will find icons even within that realm. Archizoom’s Safari lounge, a modular black fiberglass
art+auction april 2013 | blouinartinfo.com
112
ch
ro
no
log
ica
lly
fr
om
le
ft:
fo
nta
na
ar
te
; v
itr
a d
es
ign
mu
se
um
, W
eil
am
rh
ein
, g
er
ma
ny
; c
hr
ist
ie’s
; h
ive
, h
ive
mo
de
rn
.co
m,
$1,
155
; c
om
pa
ss
o,
mil
an
o,
$10
,00
0,
info
@c
om
pa
ss
o-d
es
ign
.it
1957•Achille and Pier Giacomo CastiglioniMezzadro seat Like a Duchamp readymade, a standard tractor seat poised atop a contemporary base is transformed. Agrarian utility begets cosmopolitan design.
Postmodernism is the secondary market’s toughest sell. As Ettore Sottsass said, ‘Can we still use the word furniture?’
❝
❝
IconicItalia
•Giuseppe TerragniFollia chair Terragni’s side chair, as totemic as a tribal sculpture and as severe as a Bauhaus prototype, possesses the blunt refinement of a design by Eileen Gray.
1936–37
1968•Jonathan De Pas, Paolo Lomazzi, and Donato D’UrbinoJoe sofaWarhol may have worshipped Marilyn Monroe but these designers favored her ex, Joe DiMaggio, the son of Italian immigrants. Blown up to sofa-scale, a leather baseball glove made a sumptuous Pop reference—and evoked an Oldenburg soft sculpture, too.
1951•Gio PontiLeggera chairBased on a vernacular design from Chiavari, a Ligurian fishing village, Ponti’s light-limbed Leggera was a response to the postwar challenge of making the strongest possible chair with the least amount of wood.
1932•Pietro Chiesa Fontana tableWith a sleek silhouette that anticipates 1970s minimalism, Chiesa’s glass table— a contemporary of French Art Deco design—was light-years ahead of its time.
seating pod upholstered in fake zebra skin, sold at Sotheby’s New York in 2010 for $10,000 (est. $10–15,000).
Postmodernism, the last historically identifiable chapter of 20th-century Italian design, is the secondary market’s toughest sell. Studio Alchymia, established in 1976 by architect Alessandro Guerriero with members Branzi, Mendini, and Sottsass, and the Memphis Group, which succeeded it in 1981 and involved several of the same figures, took anti-design to a final, ironic height, calling their activities—with supreme disingenuousness—new design. Interviewed in 1972 by fellow designer Vittorio Gregotti, Sottsass posed the question, “Can we still use the word furniture?” in describing what he saw as the unprecedented direction of Italian design.
Postmodernism remains as problematic for collectors today as when it was introduced. Given its high-profile debut on the international stage, the celebrity of its players (along with the
Italians, Memphis boasted Michael Graves, Arata Isozaki, Hans Hollein, and Shiro Kuramata as participants), and the scarcity of its objects (the early Alchymia collection “Bau. Haus” comprised mostly prototypes), Italian postmodernism should be as appealing to collectors as a red Ferrari sitting in a heated garage, ready for a spin on a sunny Sunday. But it isn’t. Experts agree that the market has not digested Memphis because collectors find it indigestible at home. The movement’s discordant decorativeness, provocative use of cheap mate-rials like Formica, overblown sculptural scale, and gleeful garishness haven’t elicited a warm welcome from people acquiring 20th-century design as furnishings to live with.
Michael Jefferson, a senior specialist at Wright, is realistic about the challenge of Italy’s postmodern phase: “It’s not going to go away.” Postmodernism’s pride in being the delinquent of Italian design could keep it out of polite collecting circles forever.
113
1977•Vico MagistrettiAtollo table lamp A beautifully balanced study in reductive form, Atollo approaches the mathematical: a distillation of design that is as pure as a prime number.
blouinartinfo.com | april 2013 art+auction
ch
ro
no
log
ica
lly
fr
om
le
ft:
ca
in m
od
er
n,
los
an
ge
le
s,
$4
,80
0,
ca
inm
od
er
ne
.co
m;
ma
rio
de
lo
pe
z a
nd
sa
m k
au
fm
an
ga
ll
er
y, l
os
an
ge
le
s,
$6
,50
0,
pa
la
eo
mo
de
rn
@y
ah
oo
.co
m;
ch
ris
tie
’s;
ol
uc
e,
mil
an
; t
he
me
tr
op
ol
ita
n m
us
eu
m o
f a
rt
1969•Gaetano PesceUp 5 chairTechnologically sophisticated—the foam pieces were vacuum-packed flat for shipping and inflated when the buyer opened the package—Up 5 is a “mother” chair with a “child” ottoman with an umbilical cord.
1979•Ettore Sottsass The Structures Tremble tableSottsass’s glass-topped table looks electrified by change—or weak in the knees. Postmodernism would settle for nothing less than total revolution and the death of modern design.
1978•Alessandro MendiniProust chairWith Minimalism ascendant, Mendini’s reactionary explosion of a chair is a Rococo reproduction handpainted in a Pointillist style— a mixed message delivered from design history’s deep subconscious.
1972•Guido Drocco and Franco MelloCapitello chairThe pinnacle of Western achievement or culture in ruins? Italy’s design commu-nity loved a good argument—about nationalism and classicism as well as a lounge chair.
