Rare fabric panel designed by Gio Ponti

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About the Item

Extremely rare fabric panel designed by Gio Ponti and produced by famous Turin based textile house, Avigdor. This design is untitled ‘La casa degli Efebi’. Printed satin. It can be stretched on a canvas to be hung on the wall, or used for cushions and upholstery. Marked: D’APRES LA CASA DEGLI EFEBI DI GIO PONTI, AVIGDOR MADE IN ITALY.
Gio Ponti is the most famous italian designers of XXth century, with Achille Castiglioni, Ettore Sottsass, Gabriella Crespi, Joe Colombo, Piero Fornasetti and Gae Aulenti.

Designer/ creator : Gio Ponti
Dimensions : 35,4 x 57 inches (90 x 145 cm)
Place of origin : Italy
Period : 20th century
Date of manufacture : second half 20th centuryCreator: Gio Ponti (Designer)Design: Leggera ChairDimensions: Height: 35.44 in (90 cm)Width: 55.52 in (141 cm)Depth: 0.4 in (1 cm)Style: Modern (Of the Period)Materials and Techniques: Cotton,Fabric,SatinPlace of Origin: ItalyPeriod: 20th CenturyDate of Manufacture: 2000Condition: ExcellentSeller Location: Saint ouen, FRReference Number: 1stDibs: LU894542339322

Leggera

Designed by Gio Ponti

The Leggera chair is as striking on its own as it is in any setting, which is just as Gio Ponti(18911979) intended.

The gifted Milanese architect who also designed, taught and wrote studied architecture at the esteemed Polytechnic University of Milan, graduating in 1921. A stint in an architectural office followed, as did award-winning porcelain designs for Richard Ginori. In 1928, Ponti launched the revered design journal Domus, promoting the Novocento movement, which decried the fake antique and ugly modern in architecture and design. This was very much in line with Pontis own distinct style, which united the historical classicism of Italy with a modern ideal. The furniture makers work to this day exudes that spirit of innovation and timelessness, just as it did with the Leggera chair.

Ponti brought new meaning to traditional Italian country furniture with the 1952 Leggera chair and the Superleggera that followed specifically, he looked to the simple but well-known chairs designed in Chiavari, a nearby fishing village, for inspiration. The Leggeras gently tapering legs, ladder back and cane seat are features that render it easily recognizable to any collector. And like most of Pontis furniture, its tapering supports and lightweight ashwood frame leggera is Italian for light give it a ballerina-like appearance, as if the chair is dancing on its toes. First produced by Cassina, the Leggera also represented a bold step in its reductionist construction. The frame of the chair was pared down to its most essential lines, offering the illusion of weightlessness, like Pontis best work.

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Gio Ponti

An architect, furniture and industrial designer and editor, Gio Ponti was arguably the most influential figure in 20th-century Italian modernism.

Ponti designed thousands of furnishings and products from cabinets, mirrors and chairs to ceramics and coffeemakers and his buildings, including the brawny Pirelli Tower (1956) in his native Milan, and the castle-like Denver Art Museum (1971), were erected in 14 countries. Through Domus, the magazine he founded in 1928, Ponti brought attention to virtually every significant movement and creator in the spheres of modern art and design.

The questing intelligence Ponti brought to Domus is reflected in his work: as protean as he was prolific, Pontis style cant be pegged to a specific genre.

In the 1920s, as artistic director for the Tuscan porcelain maker Richard Ginori, he fused old and new; his ceramic forms were modern, but decorated with motifs from Roman antiquity. In pre-war Italy, modernist design was encouraged, and after the conflict, Ponti along with designers such as Carlo Mollino, Franco Albini, Marco Zanuso found a receptive audience for their novel, idiosyncratic work. Pontis typical furniture forms from the period, such as the wedge-shaped Distex chair, are simple, gently angular, and colorful; equally elegant and functional. In the 1960s and 70s, Pontis style evolved again as he explored biomorphic shapes, and embraced the expressive, experimental designs of Ettore Sottsass Jr., Joe Colombo and others.

Ponti’s signature furniture piece the one by which he is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Germanys Vitra Design Museum and elsewhere is the sleek Superleggera chair, produced by Cassina starting in 1957. (The name translates as superlightweight advertisements featured a model lifting it with one finger.)

Ponti had a playful side, best shown in a collaboration he began in the late 1940s with the graphic artist Piero Fornasetti. Ponti furnishings were decorated with bright finishes and Fornasetti’s whimsical lithographic transfer prints of things such as butterflies, birds or flowers; the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts possesses a 1950 secretary from their Architetturra series, which feature case pieces covered in images of building interiors and facades. The grandest project Ponti and Fornasetti undertook, however, lies on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean: the interiors of the luxury liner Andrea Doria, which sank in 1956.

Widely praised retrospectives at the Queens Museum of Art in 2001 and at the Design Museum London in 2002 sparked a renewed interest in Ponti among modern design aficionados. (Marco Romanellis monograph, which was written for the London show, offers a fine overview of Pontis work.) Today, a wide array of Pontis designs are snapped up by savvy collectors who want to give their homes a touch of Italian panache and effortless chic.

Find a range of vintage Gio Ponti desks, dining chairs, coffee tables and other furniture on 1stDibs.