Goodbye to Gaetano Pesce, icon of playful and never banal design

He died at New York at 84 years old the Italian designer, sculptor and architect Gaetano Pesceamong the most famous in the world, famous for his playful style, the rounded, almost humanized shapes, always very colourful. The news arrived a few hours ago, from his own Instagram account:

It is said that the creative visionary, a man who revolutionized the history of design, remained «positive, playful and always curious” until the end. We can't believe it: Pesce, who lived in New York since the Eighties and watched (knowing how to interpret it well) our Italy from afar, he was expected soon in Milan for a large monographic exhibition within the Fuorisalone during the DesignWeek in the spaces of Veneranda Ambrosiana Library (from 15th to 23rd April, Free admission). The exhibition – they confirmed to us – will take place: we will see the large installation outside the Ambrosiana The Tired Man and, in the library spaces, the monograph Nice to See You which collects one thirty worksmostly unpublished, by Gaetano Pesce. There are works from the past, but above all the latest creations of 2023 and 2024 which, as Gaetano Pesce himself wrote, «were selected not only for their functional role, intrinsic to the word “Design”, but also as message bearers. Objects with a double meaning: the useful one and the one that makes you think.”

We show you some of them here:

Gaetano Pesce, Gaetana Lamp, LX, 2023, one of the works of recent years, also on display in Milan during the Design Week

Gaetano Pesce, Leaf shelf (Pink), 2022, another recent work on display

Gaetano Pesce, born in La Spezia in '39, graduated in Architecture in Venice, became famous thanks to the series of armchairs Upunmistakable in their rounded shape: in '69 they exploded on the market, due to their irreverent character and that fiery red color. The most famous model, the UP5, he remembered a mother's womb, attached to a ball, square like a prisoner. In Fish playful design is always also political and bearer of meanings: the same artist would later explain how, in the years of protest and feminist demands, his chair also wanted to talk about this problem. The series UP it was also innovative in terms of the materials used (flexible polyurethane foam, a cutting-edge compound, perfect for having an armchair as elastic as a mattress) and Pesce has repeatedly said that the idea simply came to him playfully clutching a sponge. B&B produced the series until 1973, when it was discovered that part of the compound used for the material was toxic, but since 2000 the armchairs have returned to the market, in a new version without toxicity. Meanwhile, the piece has become an icon in museums around the world. From the MoMa to the Met in “his” New York, passing through Paris and London, there are countless exhibitions and objects on display by Pesce.

After all, how can you not go crazy for his creations? Gaetano Pesce I was someone capable of conjugating a very cultured mind and refined with joys of lifewith a taste for jokes and the absurd and it was the designer who – in clear contrast with the minimalism fashionable in the past – “had fun” in humanize our homes: there are vases and jars of fish in the shape of fish or poles, lamps with ears, sofas that look like landscapes, and so on. However, there has been some criticism of his work: when, in Milan, in 2019, the designer exhibited a giga-version of his Up full of pins, some feminist movements did not like it. He was surprised and from New York he told us that he really wanted to communicate and talk about the urgent issue of violence against women.

Gaetano Pesce's infinite creations will remain, all capable of overcome the boundaries between art, design and industry, all capable of making a smile (and a thought). It will remain a spectacular and committed design, always positive, light without being futile. Necessary.