Carlo Mollino - Photographs London Wednesday, May 15, 2019 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Private Collection, Italy

  • Exhibited

    Carlo Mollino, Arabesques, Castello di Rivoli, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, 20 September 2006 - 7 January 2007, this lot

  • Literature

    C. Mollino, Arabesques, Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2006, p. 271, no. 124

  • Artist Biography

    Carlo Mollino

    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.

    View More Works

127

No title

1962-1973
Unique Polaroid print, flush-mounted.
Image: 9.5 x 7.2 cm (3 3/4 x 2 7/8 in.)
Sheet: 10.7 x 8.5 cm (4 1/4 x 3 3/8 in.)

Estimate
£4,000 - 6,000 

Sold for £6,875

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Genevieve Janvrin
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Yuka Yamaji
Co-Head of Department, Photographs

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Photographs

London Auction 16 May 2019