Design as Art: Industrial Strength

By: Doris Goldstein

November 2007

In the 1990 biography of her father, Gio Ponti, The Complete Work, 1923–1978, Lisa Licitra Ponti summarized his life’s achievements: buildings that he designed in 13 countries, 25 years of teaching and 50 years of editing articles in all 560 issues of Domus, the architecture and design magazine he founded in 1928. During those five-plus decades, Gio Ponti (1891–1979) was the colossus of Italian design, equally at ease with tradition and modernity. He was both a craftsman and an industrial manufacturer. His output extended beyond architecture to embrace the design of interiors, furniture, ceramics, glass, textiles, lighting and industrial products.

Born in Milan in 1891, Ponti interrupted his architectural studies at the Milan Polytechnic to fulfill his military service during World War I, then returned to receive his degree in 1921. Although he always considered himself an architect—"I think about architecture at night and work on architecture during the day"—he joined ceramics manufacturer Richard Ginori as artistic director in 1923. Responsible for production as well as design, he transformed the company into a model of excellence and efficiency. During the next seven years, Ponti designed a vast number of plates, vases and urns decorated with elegant neoclassical motifs imbued with a modern spirit. In 1925 his ceramics won the Grand Prix at the Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs. In the Expo’s catalogue, Ponti wrote, "Industry is the style of the 20th century, its mode of creation"—which was tantamount to a claim that mass production and quality were not incompatible.

At Christie’s New York in 2006, a circa-1925 Ponti vase for Richard Ginori featuring the figure of an Amazon sold for $33,600. "It is beautifully executed, particularly the shading, which is modeled to create a three-dimensional effect," says Carina Villinger, a specialist in the auction house’s 20th-century decorative art and design department.

The mid-century years were the most productive for Ponti, who approached every new project with passion and a sense of purpose. He designed chandeliers, lamps and drinking glasses for the Venetian glassmaker Venini, an espresso machine for La Pavoni, interiors for Italian ocean liners and flatware for the French silversmith Christofle.

Ponti’s collaboration with artists such as Paolo De Poli and Piero Fornasetti resulted in some of his most imaginative works. De Poli was a master of enamel work on copper. At New York’s Primavera Gallery, a slant-top secretary desk by Ponti is elaborately decorated by De Poli with a variety of motifs that gallery owner Audrey Friedman suggests were "playing off the 1920s collages of Braque and Picasso." The New York gallery, which recently moved from Madison Avenue to Chelsea, currently has about 13 Ponti pieces at prices ranging from $6,000 to $185,000, the latter for a hexagonal table inlaid with a variety of semi-precious stones, including malachite and lapis lazuli.

In 1956 Ponti designed a group of animal, bird and serpent figures, possibly cut from paper and then bent into the desired form. De Poli turned Ponti’s ideas into objects. In 2006 the Chicago auction house Wright sold "Gatto" ("Cat"), enamel and silver leaf over copper, 1956, for $10,200 (est. $5,000–$7,000). "It’s a fanciful little sculpture," says auctioneer Richard Wright, "that brings together both the rationality and playfulness of Italian design."

Ponti began working with Fornasetti in the 1950s and said their collaboration was a "marriage of contradictions." While Ponti’s style was pure and restrained, Fornasetti’s playful and exuberant. He was a master of trompe l’oeil painting and strongly influenced by Surrealism. "I married decoration to form at a time when decoration was rejected and banished," Fornasetti declared in the late 1930s. Ponti said of Fornasetti, "He made objects speak."At Christie’s London in 2006, a 20-piece collection of Ponti’s furniture, originally commissioned by a Milanese family, sold for a total of $883,000, more than double the high estimate. The top lot was a walnut bureau bookcase decorated by Fornasetti with a 19th-century map of Venice that sold for $178,000 against an estimate of $110,000 to $140,000. "Fornasetti was an amazing draftsman," says Peter Loughrey, founder and director of Los Angeles Modern Auctions, who purchased the work. The auction record for a Ponti-Fornasetti piece is held by a 1938 cabinet that sold for $240,000, against an estimate of $150,000 to $200,000, at Wright in 2004. "It was a simple, well-proportioned piece decorated with an exceptional floral motif," Wright says. In May the auction house sold a pair of Ponti enameled aluminum lounge chairs upholstered in skai (vinyl) and created in 1953, for $132,000 (est. $30,000–$40,000) and a 1954 enameled steel and glass coffee table for $134,400 (est. $25,000–$30,000). Both examples came from Via Dezze 49, Ponti’s home in Milan. Michael Jefferson, a Wright specialist in 20th-century design, said the coffee table encapsulates the best aspects of Ponti’s architecture and design of the 1950s.

Ponti’s "Superleggera" (superlight) chair is the most recognized and successful of his furniture designs. First introduced in 1957 and preceded by earlier versions known as Leggera (light), it was based on a vernacular country chair from the fishing villages of Chiavari on Italy’s Mediterranean coast near Genoa. Ponti reworked the traditional design by angling the back and tapering the legs. The update, he said, was to reflect the period in which he was working. The chair, made of ash and rush-seated, was produced by Cassina, an Italian furniture manufacturer. The firm dramatically demonstrated the chair’s durability by tossing it at the showroom ceiling and letting it fall to the ground undamaged. The chair is still in production today.

New York dealer Brian Kish, who curated "Gio Ponti: A Metaphysical World" at the Queens Museum of Art in 2001, specializes in Italian design by architects. He is currently offering more than a dozen Ponti pieces ranging in price from $3,000 to $70,000. Included is a rare set of 10 Leggera chairs from the early 1950s. (Similar chairs were made for the Ponti-designed Villa Planchart in Caracas, Venezuela.)

Ponti’s architectural works included government buildings in Baghdad, department stores in Hong Kong and the Netherlands, private residences in South America and hotels in Italy. At Christie’s New York in 2006, a glass-and-brass ceiling light from the salon of the Parco dei Principi hotel in Rome sold for $126,000 against an estimate of $25,000 to $35,000. "It’s a minimalist piece, yet highly decorative. You can see Ponti at work playing with geometric shapes," says Villinger.

Ponti’s greatest architectural achievement is the Pirelli Tower in Milan, one of Europe’s first skyscrapers. Loughrey says the building has a particular Italian slant, pointing out that its shape bears a striking similarity to the elongated necks in Modigliani’s portraits. His only public architectural project in the U.S. is the 1971 Denver Art Museum. Often called "the fortress," it was built without windows, only slits, which light up at night. "Art is a treasure, and these thin but jealous walls protect it," Ponti said at the time.

"He worked without a pause, without hurry, without effort, without a computer," Lisa Licitra Ponti writes in her book. "He involved other people but he proceeded alone, arriving on the spot—early, late—by his own devices."

Brian Kish, New York
212.925.7850 briankish.com

Cassina, New York
212.245.2121 cassinausa.com

Christie’s, London
011.44.20.7839.9060 christies.com

Christie’s, New York
212.636.2000 christies.com

Galleria Colombari, Milan, Italy
011.39.02.2900.1189

Los Angeles Modern Auctions
323.904.1950 lamodern.com

Primavera Gallery, New York
212.924.6600 primaveragallery.com

Wright, Chicago
312.563.0020 wright20.com