Carlo Mollino - Photographs London Wednesday, October 31, 2018 | Phillips

Photographs

London Auction 1 November 2018

  • Provenance

    Photology, Milan

  • Artist Biography

    Carlo Mollino

    Italian • 1905 - 1973

    Carlo Mollino made sexy furniture. His style may have grown out of the whiplash curves of Art Nouveau, but the sinuous lines of his furniture were more humanoid than vegetal, evoking arched backs and other body parts. Mollino was also an avid aviator, skier and racecar driver — he designed his own car for Le Mans. His love of speed and danger comes across in his designs, which MoMA curator Paola Antonelli has described as having "frisson."

    Mollino had no interest in industrial design and the attendant constraints of material costs and packaging. His independent wealth allowed him to pick and choose projects, resulting in an oeuvre of unique, often site-specific works that were mostly executed by the Turin joinery firm Apelli & Varesio. Apart from a coffee table that he designed in 1950 for the American company Singer & Sons, his furniture never went into production. Notwithstanding the support of Gio Ponti, Mollino's design contemporaries largely dismissed him as an eccentric outsider. However, the combination of scarcity (Mollino only made several hundred works in his lifetime), exquisite craftsmanship and idiosyncratic "frisson" has rightly placed Carlo Mollino in the highest tier of twentieth-century design collecting.

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POLAROIDS from the Piero Bisazza Collection

77

Carlo Mollino

Untitled

1960s
2 unique Polaroid prints, each flush-mounted to board.
Each image: 9.5 x 7.3 cm (3 3/4 x 2 7/8 in.)
Each sheet: 10.7 x 8.5 cm (4 1/4 x 3 3/8 in.)

Estimate
£4,000 - 6,000 ♠

Sold for £28,750

Contact Specialist
Genevieve Janvrin
Co-Head of Photographs, Europe
+33 1 53 71 77 87

Yuka Yamaji
Co-Head of Photographs, Europe
+44 20 7318 4098

Photographs

London Auction 1 November 2018