Mario Lattes, conference room, Lattes Publishing House, Turin
Gifted by the above to an employee of the Lattes Publishing House, Turin
Thence by descent
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Anne Bony, Les années 50, Paris, 1982, p. 315
Galerie Denys Bosselet, Carlo Mollino 1905/1973, Premier Designer, Dernier Artisan des Années '50, Paris, 1984, n.p.
Derek E. Ostergard, ed., Makhintosh to Mollino, Fifty Years of Design, exh. cat., Barry Friedman Ltd., New York, 1984, no. 60
Fulvio Ferrari, Carlo Mollino, Cronaca, Turin, 1985, p. 121, fig. 199
Giovanni Brino, Carlo Mollino, Munich, 1987, p. 110
Rossella Colombari, Carlo Mollino Catalogo Del Mobili-Furniture Catalogue, Milan, 2005, p. 80, fig. 112
Giovanni Brino, Carlo Mollino: Architecture as Autobiography, Milan, 2005, fig. 347
Fulvio Ferrari and Napoleone Ferrari, The Furniture of Carlo Mollino, New York, 2006, p. 172, figs. 322-23, p. 228
Fulvio Ferrari and Napoleone Ferrari, eds., Carlo Mollino Arabesques, exh. cat., Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Milan, 2007, p. 91, fig. 128 for a technical drawing, p. 92, fig. 131 for an image
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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