Carlo Mollino - Design London Friday, June 19, 2020 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Savona Football Club, Italy

  • Literature

    Fulvio Ferrari, Carlo Mollino Cronaca, Turin, 1985, p. 140
    Giovanni Brino, Carlo Mollino: Architettura come autobiografia, Milan, 1985, pp. 144-45
    Rossella Colombari, Carlo Mollino Catalogo dei Mobili - Furniture Catalogue, Milan, 2005, p. 90
    Fulvio Ferrari and Napoleone Ferrari, The Furniture of Carlo Mollino, New York, 2006, pp. 153-55, 231
    Fulvio Ferrari and Napoleone Ferrari, eds., Carlo Mollino Arabesques, exh. cat., Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Milan, 2007, pp. 95-97

  • Catalogue Essay

    The present lot is registered in the library of the Museo Casa Mollino, Turin, as numbers CM-267-26 to 35.

  • 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.

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5

Set of ten armchairs, designed for the Lutrario Ballroom, Turin

circa 1960
Resinflex, walnut-veneered plywood, painted iron, brass, rubber.
Tallest: 77 x 61 x 56.3 cm (30 3/8 x 24 x 22 1/8 in.)
Manufactured by Doro, Cuneo, Italy. Reverse of nine armchairs with manufacturer's label printed DORO/CUNEO.

Estimate
£25,000 - 35,000 

Sold for £60,000

Contact Specialist

Madalena Horta E Costa
Head of Sale, Associate Specialist
+44 20 7318 4019
MHortaECosta@phillips.com

Design

London Auction 19 June 2020