PARIS.- The Italian Design department at Artcurial will present its 4th sale on 13 April. Work by the grand masters of Italian Design, including Gio Ponti, Ico Parisi and Gino Sarfatti will feature alongside an exciting new section on 1970s Design with designers who are less well-known. Names include Gaetano Pesce, Joe Colombo, Tobia Scarpa, Mario Ceroli, Superstudio and Enzo Mari, who died in 2020 and is the subject of a current exhibition at the Milan Triennale.

Ettore Sottsass will once again be in the spotlight with pieces that span his career and encompass different disciplines.

There will also be an opportunity to discover some modern masterpieces such as an enamel and glass coffee table, that resulted from the collaboration between Gio Ponti and Paolo De Poli (estimate : 10 000-15 000 €), as well as the pair of armchairs for the Settebello train by Gio Ponti (estimate: 24 000-28 000 €).

« I am delighted to present a stunning group of pieces by Superstudio, composed of three items of furniture «Quaderna» (meaning notebook, in reference to the lines), that played a fundamental part in the history of design. The Superstudio edition with green lines is rarely seen on the market.

Artcurial has a strong desire to promote this group whose radical ideas revolutionised architecture; hence the importance of the accompanying lithographs by the group that add to our understanding of this movement. » – Justine Despretz, Italian Design Consultant, Artcurial

1970s Design in the spotlight
For the first time, the auction house will offer pieces by Superstudio, the important and radical architectural firm set up in 1966-67 in Florence, that advocated a new conceptual approach to architecture. Items of Quaderna furniture by Superstudio will be presented in the sale alongside their architectural drawings, demonstrating their radical idea of breaking with design norms by proposing standard models that could be applied to different areas and on different scales. Superstudio presented this project, which remains a cultural icon today, in the exhibition: The New Domestic Landscape at MOMA in 1972. In 2019, the FRAC Centre-Val de Loire hosted the exhibition «Superstudio : La vie après l’architecture». This was the first exhibition in France dedicated to Superstudio’s work, and included all the group’s major projects. In the photo, we see Superstudio’s tall table given the name “Quaderna” for its motif taken from school notebooks and a rare lamp by Gianfranco Frattini mod.535, appearing on the market for just the second time.

Alongside these items will be a magnificent modular sofa called «Sunset in New York» in which the designer uses form and colour to suggest the horizon line of the city at sunset (est : 10 000 – 15 000 €).

An iconic piece by Carlo Mollino
An important highlight of the Artcurial sale on 13 April will be a pair of bunkbeds by Carlo Mollino. This item, designed for the Casa del Sole in Cervinia, Italy, is estimated to fetch between 25 000 and 35 000 €. The Casa del Sole in Cervinia represented the culmination of Mollino’s research into alpine architecture. Built in 1948 to accommodate skiers, the building is organised into small, rational apartments. In 1953, having designed the building and its interior, Mollino turned his attention to creating the furniture which was manufactured by Ettore Canali. This was one of his most modernist projects. The mountainous environment and the intended use of this building led him to focus on the functional aspect of its design. The Casa del Sole is one of the only projects by Mollino in which the space comprises a series of elements making up a “housing unit”.

The bed is composed of sections of rectangular wooden slats. The structure echoes, ideally and visually, the lines on the façade of the building, which in turn was inspired by traditional wooden houses in the region.

Structural details of the bed, such as the folding night tables, enhance the functionality of its appearance. With an elegant and structural simplicity, this versatile piece could be used today, as a sofa or displayed as a decorative piece, and would fit into many different interiors, from a Parisian apartment to an alpine chalet.