Alessandro Mendini, artist and designer, has worked throughout his career with various international design companies awakening with his projects the desires of contemporary buyers and art lovers.
ALESSANDRO MENDINI PROUST MONUMENTALE
Photo Alberto Ferrero
Once defining himself as a “designer of a milky way”, Mendini is an artist who pursues a range of interests, with notable passions for literature, architecture and design. Mendini considers himself a “magazine designer” after his work with Casabella and Domus throughout the 1970s and his work to steer the magazines in the direction of radical, functional and rational design.
ALESSANDRO MENDINI PROUST MONUMENTALE
Photo Alberto Ferrero
Alessandro Mendini led art direction for Bisazza during the late 1980s, and under his direction Bisazza was one of the first companies who looked to leading architects and designers for artistic advice developing from then on collaborations with a variety of personalities in the world of art, architecture and design such as Sandro Chia, Ettore Sottsass, Jaime Hayon, Marcel Wanders and Alessandro Mendini himself.
Convinced that architecture does not originate from the city but from the human body, the “centre of all spatial interest,” Mendini has carried through a number of architectural projects, including the tower in Hiroshima in Japan, the Groninger Museum (Holland 1989-94), the Louisiana Museum (Denmark 1996), the Arosa Casino in Arosa (Switzerland 1997), the Maghetti-neighborhood in Lugano (Switzerland 1999). His project for the Subway of Naples (2001-2003) was presented at the Biennial of Architecture in Venice (2002) and was awarded a gold medal for Architecture at the Milan Triennial (2003). He was also twice awarded of the Compasso d’Oro (Golden Compass Award): in 1979 for his theoretical analyses and in 1982 for design.
“Mobili Per Uomo” (Furniture for Man), a notable project from Mendini, is made up of nine out-of-scale sculptures in yellow gold mosaic designed and created between 1997 and 2008. The project started as a symbolic expression of the essentials of a man’s wardrobe: Giacca, Scarpa, Guanto e Testa pensante (Jacket, Shoe, Glove and Thinking Head, 1997) and was later complemented by Lampada e Tazzina (Lampshade and Cup, from the Nuovi Mobili per Uomo – New Furniture for Man series, 2002), Stella (Star, 2003), Cappello (Hat, 2004) and Borsa (Suitcase, 2008).
ALESSANDRO MENDINI MOBILI PER UOMO
Photo Ottavio Tomasini
The entire Mobili per Uomo collection is now showcased in Vicenza together with the Proust Monumentale, the famous Proust armchair originally designed by Mendini in 1987 with Studio Alchymia, produced by Bisazza in an oversized version for the “Art of Italian Design” exhibition in Athens, October 2005.
