ALESSANDRO MENDINI (Milan, 1931-2019) and STUDIO ALCHIMIA.
Poltrona Proust" armchair.
Early edition, early 1980s.
Wood and hand-painted upholstery.
In good general condition. With slight soiling. Unused.
This piece was acquired by the present owner from Luis Adelantado's furniture shop in Valencia around 1995.
It is an Alchimia production circa 1980. No apparent maker's stamp or maker's markings.
Previously this same armchair was exhibited at the Luis Adelantado Gallery (Valencia), in the exhibition "Neomodernism, design by Alchimia" in 1987. This exhibition is listed in the list of exhibitions of Atelier Mendini (ateliermendini.it).
Dimensions: 108 x 102 x 90 cm.
A benchmark of international design, the "Poltrona Proust" armchair, designed by Alessandro Mendini and created in collaboration with the artist Franco Migliaccio, defies aesthetic conventions as no other piece of furniture has ever done before. With its "Proustian weave", i.e. a weave inspired by Marcel Proust's descriptions of place and time and arising from the literary and pictorial stimuli (impressionism, divisionism and pointillism) associated with the French writer, the piece of furniture becomes a statement of intent of colour and vitality. Its structure is inspired by that of an 18th century bèrgere that the architect discovered during a trip to the Veneto region, which caught his attention because of its intrinsic restrained strength. The painted dots of colour transform an old armchair into something new, alluding to the pointillist painting of Paul Signac and, at the same time, to baroque horror vacui. The first Proust armchair made its debut, along with other Alchimia furniture, in 1978 at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara for the exhibition "Close Encounters of Architecture" curated by Andrea Branzi and Ettore Sottsass. From that year onwards, about 15 armchairs were made, all handmade and personally controlled by Mendini. The chair was subsequently included in the catalogue of Alchimia, Bau-Haus (1979) and Alchimia produced several examples until 1987. Some of these examples are preserved in private collections, others are exhibited in museums: at the Museum of Applied Arts in Ghent in Belgium, at the MoMA in New York, at the Triennale Museum in Milan, at the Castello Sforzesco Furniture Museum in Milan, at the Groninger Museum in Holland, at the Kunstpalast Museum in Düsseldorf , at the Museum für angewandte Kunst in Vienna, at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil-am-Rhein or at the one in Die Neue Sammlung in Nuremberg.
Alessandro Mendini is one of the leading figures of the Italian Radical design movement, as well as an important Italian planner, designer and critic. Trained at the Madrid Polytechnic in 1959, his activity was not limited solely to architecture, but he also excelled in the field of design. His theoretical work was also very important, both with the famous Studio Alchimia and with his brother Francesco, also an architect, with whom he founded the Atelier Mendini (1989). He was director of Casabella (1970-1976) and Domus (1980-1985 and 2010-2011), and founder of the magazines Modo (1977) and Ollo (1988). Mendini collaborated with renowned international brands such as Alessi, Bisazza, Cartier, Hermès, Philips, Swatch and Venini, for which he designed collections of household items, objects and furniture. Also worth mentioning are the Anna G. corkscrew for Alessi (1994) and, in the new century, the luxurious column for Cartier (2002), the Magis Proust armchair for Magis (2011) and the Amuleto lamp (2013) for Ramun. His architectural creations include the Alessi factory in Omegna, the Byblos Art Hotel-Villa Amistà in Verona and the multifunctional complex (including the municipal theatre) in Arezzo, among other buildings. Outside Italy, the Paradiso Tower in Hiroshima (Japan), a neighbourhood in Lugano (Switzerland), the Madsack headquarters in Hannover and a commercial building in Lörrach (Germany), as well as numerous buildings in Europe, the United States and Asia. His numerous awards include two Compasso d'Oro design awards (1979 and 1981). He also received the New York Architectural League Award, an honorary degree from the Milan Polytechnic and the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan (France), and the 2015 European Architecture Prize.