Antonio Fornaroli and Gio Ponti: An Exceptional Shared Intent
By Salvatore Licitra, Gio Ponti’s grandson and founder of the Gio Ponti Archives, Milan
I am pleased to have the opportunity to write about Antonio Fornaroli, as it is also a chance to illustrate Gio Ponti’s work. Or rather, to discuss the output of the inextricable Milanese duo: Ponti – Fornaroli, from an interesting and unprecedented perspective.
In the selection offered at auction, I am reminded of the objects that brought to life the beautiful Fornaroli apartment on the upper floors of a house in central Milan. I knew it well, and last visited it several years ago, savouring its elegant, effortlessly experimental and unconventional atmosphere. The array of works convey the spirit that fuelled and kept the Ponti - Fornaroli duo together since 1933, initially with Eugenio Soncini, and that lasted throughout both of their long careers.
In Antonio Fornaroli, Ponti had not only found a partner who was able to understand and execute his architectural projects, but also an ally in the exciting campaign for a cultural and lifestyle renewal that was emerging in those years. This encompassed audaciously experimental technological or formal innovations such as marble slab cladding on the monumental Montecatini building (1936), made possible thanks to a studied coupling of slabs with a reinforced concrete support, as well as studies for the tapering structure of the Pirelli Tower (1956 -1960), or the unstructured plan of the original design of the Savoia Assicurazioni building (1971). Experimentation was also manifest through the intent to ‘contaminate’ interiors with works by young artists, designers, and architects of the time or samples of applied arts and crafts gathered during Ponti’s extensive cultural travels throughout Italy.
Housed in Casa Fornaroli, alongside Ponti designs and furnishings from various decades (furniture decorated by Adriano Spilimbergo in the 1930s or by Piero Zuffi in the 1950s and pieces with clear references to Villa Planchart), were a variety of objects such as Fausto Melotti ceramics and sculptures as well as Paolo Buffa chairs – all in dialogue with each other. There were also vases and objects in enamelled copper by De Poli, glass for Venini by Wirkkala, Ponti, Bianconi, Buzzi, Tobia and Carlo Scarpa. In this fantastic selection, we also see works by Lucio Fontana, Carlo De Carli with his beautiful chairs, silver prototypes by Ponti for Christofle, ceramics by Picasso, designs by Pietro Chiesa and Max Ingrand for Fontana Arte and finally Ponti’s striking bar cabinet with an integrated oil painting.
Portrait of Antonio Fornaroli by Adriano Spilimbergo.
This complementarity of applied art, furnishings, paintings and drawings showed how art could also easily become interior decoration. The fact that Fausto Melotti not only made sculptures, but also flooring and bowls, necklaces and earrings; and that Paolo De Poli also made coasters or handles beside his vases, was the soul of the undeniably successful cultural and stylistic offering presented in those years, by Gio Ponti and Antonio Fornaroli, each in their own role.
This offering was certainly aimed at the Milanese and Italian middle-class, who were eager to break from nineteenth-century traditions, but which has also been greatly appreciated throughout the world as an expression of the ‘Italian genius’.
Among the most prolific talents to grace twentieth-century design, Gio Ponti defied categorization. Though trained as an architect, he made major contributions to the decorative arts, designing in such disparate materials as ceramics, glass, wood and metal. A gale force of interdisciplinary creativity, Ponti embraced new materials like plastic and aluminum but employed traditional materials such as marble and wood in original, unconventional ways.
In the industrial realm, he designed buildings, cars, machinery and appliances — notably, the La Cornuta espresso machine for La Pavoni — and founded the ADI (Industrial Designer Association). Among the most special works by Gio Ponti are those that he made in collaboration with master craftsmen such as the cabinetmaker Giordano Chiesa, the illustrator Piero Fornasetti and the enamellist Paolo de Poli.
1919 Watercolour and ink on paper. 25 x 25.1 cm (9 7/8 x 9 7/8 in.) Signed GIO PONTI/1919 bottom right. Together with a certificate of expertise from the Gio Ponti Archives.