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 JOE COLOMBO: INVENTING THE FUTURE


Cesare Colombo, called Joe, was not only one of the most popular and succesful industrial designer of the 1960s, but also one of the most important dreamer of his age. He wanted to anticipate the futuristic way of living.
Through a brief but intense life, Joe Colombo left many masterpieces and especially a precise style trend, user oriented.
His destiny however, had reserved an early death to him, on the same day of his 41th birthday. Joe was an enthusiastic man, a great dreamer who made of its feature a brand.
Technological details of his projects are perfectly combined with the artistic aspect, almost a rational futurism and the structure together with the shape of the object become expression.

After his studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Brera, in the early 50's Colombo joined the "Movimento di pittura nucleare" with Enrico Baj. After started to study architecture and interior design.
He created Universale, one of the first chairs shaped in one plastic piece, Smoke the cool glass ever designed, and furnitures of innovative shapes.
The work of Colombo is featured by flexibility and modularity; Tube Chair and Multi Chair.
Colombo express itself in creating stands for exhibitions for companies such as Bayer, Hoechst, Rosenthal and Alitalia. Among Colombo's client there are Kartell, Comfort, Bonacina, B-Line, Alessi, Bernini, Zanotta, Oluce and much more. Last works are trailblazing interiors like the domestic landscape "Visiona I" (1969) and the self-sufficient "Total Furnishing Unit" (1971).
The impressive work of Joe Colombo, who died in 1971, is the result of ten years of work dedicated to the obsessive search of new ideas and projects.

Joe Colombo: Inventing the future is the exhibitions that shows the complete work of this great designer. The Joe Colombo's masterpieces are available now in an international tour which involves the most important museums. Thanks to the Joe Colombo's Studio – and particularly its chief Ignazia Favata that is also, with Mateo Kries, the curator of te exhibit – in Milan, original models and never published projects will be showed together.

Televisions that retract into the ceiling, pivoting walls with a built-in mini-bar, underground nuclear cities. A 'designer dandy' who had a passion for pipes, fast cars and plaid jackets, Joe Colombo created a wide-ranging and influential oeuvre within a relatively short period of time. Thanks in part to his astonishing productivity, he had already achieved status as one of the era's most important designers when he died in 1971 at only 41 years of age. Numbering among Colombo's most significant works are classics such as the futuristic seats Elda, Roll, Superleggera and Arm Chair, lamps like Acrilica, Spider, Coupè, Flash and Alogena, the clock Optic, the containers Combi Center e Trolley Boby but also trailblazing interiors like the domestic landscape Visiona I (1969) and the self-sufficient Total Furnishing Unit (1971). Within the context of numerous visionary concepts for the domestic future that were put forth during the 1960s, Colombo's designs stand out by virtue of their technical perfection and formal logic.

The retrospective Joe Colombo: Inventing the future is the first presentation of the designer's entire work in an international travelling exhibition. Thanks to the close co-operation of the Studio Joe Colombo in Milan, where the designer's estate is located, the exhibition will include a generous number of previously unpublished original drawings and related documents. In combination with original objects, prototypes, films, drawings, and reconstructed interiors, they will revivify the work of Joe Colombo and the dynamic and innovative era in which he lived.

The exhibition permits to everybody to come back to the 60's always with the idea of a different future, wich Joe wanted to give us.


Joe Colombo: Inventing the future
16 september-18 december 2005
Triennale di Milano
Catalogue: Vitra Design Museum edition, by Skira
www.triennale.it

edited by: 
Federica Capoduri 
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