Carlo Mollino, Villa Scalero, Turin, 1959
Fulvio Ferrari, Turin
Galerie Denys Bosselet, Paris
Marc-André Hubin, Avenue Foch, Paris, 1986
Mara Cremniter, Paris
Barry Friedman Ltd., New York, 1994
Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1997
"Carlo Mollino: Cronaca," Galleria Fulvio Ferrari, Turin, October-December 1985
"Design Italian Style: Furniture by Carlo Mollino and Carlo Graffi," Barry Friedman Ltd., New York, May 1-July 11, 1997
"George Nakashima and the Modernist Moment," James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, June 9-September 16, 2001
SELECTED ILLUSTRATIONS
Fulvio Ferrari, Carlo Mollino: Cronaca, exh. cat., Galleria Fulvio Ferrari, Turin, 1985, p. 133, figs. 221-22
Germano Celant, “Gaetano Pesce: Un appartamento a Parigi,” Domus, no. 681, March 1987, p. 59
“Storia di Sedie. Il progetto italiano dopo il 1947,” Domus, no. 708, September 1989, p. 96, fig. 7
Roberto Gabetti and Fulvio Irace, Carlo Mollino 1905-1973, Turin, 1989, pp. 25, 37
France Vanlaethem, Gaetano Pesce, Architecture Design Art, Milan, 1989, p. 95
François Burkhardt and Claude Eveno, eds., L’étrange univers de l’architecte Carlo Mollino, exh. cat., Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris,1989, p. 34, p. 119
Irene de Guttry and Maria Paola Maino, Il Mobile Italiano Degli Anni '40 e '50, Bari, 1992, p. 210, fig. 9
Fulvio Ferrari, Carlo Mollino Polaroid, Turin, 1999, n.p.
George Nakashima and the Modernist Moment, exh. cat., James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, 2001, p. 60
Rossella Colombari, Carlo Mollino: Catalogo Dei Mobili – Furniture Catalogue, Milan, 2005, p. 34, fig. 39, p. 36, fig. 46
Giovanni Brino, Carlo Mollino: Architecture as Autobiography, Milan, 2005, p. 125, fig. 289
Fulvio Ferrari and Napoleone Ferrari, The Furniture of Carlo Mollino, New York, 2006, p. 48, fig. 61, p. 200, figs. 413-14, p. 230
Fulvio Ferrari and Napoleone Ferrari, eds., Carlo Mollino: Arabesques, exh. cat., Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Milan, 2007, p. 263, fig. 102
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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