What happens when a piece of furniture stops being a simple object and begins to behave like an actor? The Mario Ceroli | Domestic Theater exhibition at Carrozzeria900 demonstrates this by reconstructing an interior from Mobili nella Valle, the series that Mario Ceroli designed in 1972 for Poltronova in Russian pine. The pieces on display — from chairs as thin as silhouettes to inlaid tables, from carved sofas to chests of drawers, armchairs, the “Annabella” bed and the wooden sun “outside the window” — all share the same history: they come from the same country house, where they remained sealed away for almost fifty years. An encounter with the public is something these works have awaited for a long time, and now that they are reunited in the gallery they appear like actors preparing for a second debut.
The furniture De Chirico imagined is real
For the first time in fifty years, a Milan exhibition brings together I mobili nella Valle, the series Mario Ceroli designed in 1972 for Poltronova, inspired by the metaphysical paintings in which Giorgio de Chirico isolated and enlarged everyday objects.
Courtesy Carrozzeria900, Milan
Courtesy Carrozzeria900, Milan
Courtesy Carrozzeria900, Milan
Courtesy Carrozzeria900, Milan
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- Giorgia Aprosio
- 19 November 2025
Every object has two aspects: a common one and a spiritual and metaphysical one, which only a few can see
Giorgio De Chirico
Seeing them together reveals how they were conceived from the outset as elements of a single theatrical frame. In addition to being a sculptor associated with Arte Povera, Ceroli is also a set designer: in both his installations and his design work, he has always conceived environments as visual devices. These two traits — and his sensitivity to space as a stage — bring him close to another great master of the twentieth century. And this is where Giorgio de Chirico comes in.
My room is a beautiful vessel where I can make adventurous journeys worthy of a stubborn explorer.
Giorgio De Chirico
In Mobili nella Valle, Ceroli draws directly on a De Chirican intuition: the idea that every object contains another dimension, invisible yet active.
The series explicitly references a group of twenty metaphysical paintings in which De Chirico isolates ordinary objects, enlarges them, and places them in improbable perspectives, amid shadows that seem to detach themselves from their source. If an object ceases to be mere function and becomes presence, it can be understood as a point of tension in space. Ceroli absorbs this principle and translates it into wood — a material that is itself alive, as suggested by the grains and knots that surface in both his sculptures and his furniture.
“In designer furniture, the relationship between the object and the person is often missing,” he noted.
And, speaking of this series: “For me, these furnishings are sculptures to touch, to use.”
The chairs, slender and upright, seem like the three-dimensional translation of metaphysical mannequins and their elongated shadows.
The tables from Rosa dei venti echo the Maestro’s still squares, where architecture becomes symbol before function.
The undulating surfaces of the sofa and armchair from the Acqua e Terra series recall the distorted shadows that stretch across metaphysical floors — volumes that appear to float and then suddenly solidify.
The Annabella bed, with its anthropomorphic silhouette, has the almost ritual monumentality of the statues that populate De Chirico’s paintings. And then there is the wooden sun carved “outside the window”: a direct reference to motifs recurring throughout De Chirico’s work — Il sole sul tempio (1969), Sole che nasce sulla piazza (1976), Sole sul cavalletto, the piece De Chirico painted live on RAI television in 1973.
The most distant memory I have of my life is the memory of a large, high-ceilinged room. It was in the evening, in that dark and gloomy room; the oil lamps stood lit and covered by the lampshade.
Giorgio De Chirico
At Carrozzeria900, what is on view is not a house, but rather an idea of a “house.” And it is in this shift — from domestic environment to mental space — that the extraordinary, once impossible dialogue between Ceroli and De Chirico becomes unexpectedly natural.
The chair is probably the most important and representable object of “Mobili Nella Valle”, an original painting of the artist Giorgio de Chirico. Mario Ceroli showed this creation for the first time during the theatrical presentation of Richard III created by Luca Ronconi in which Mario engaged and supervised with accurate detail the scenography. The High Chair is exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts in Rome and in the hall in front of the balcony of Romeo and Juliet in Verona.
Rosa Dei Venti is a masterpiece very much precious to Mario Ceroli do to its intrinsic expression directly connected with the cardinal points and our planet. Behind the obsequious homage to this element, often inlaid on its tables, lurks the desire of the artist to reconcile the majesty of wood with the limitless sea.
Mario Ceroli has been able to demonstrate one of his maximum examples of art in his creation of a sofa that transforms dynamically such a rigid materials as wood giving it curves and motions etched along with its inlaid pieces. In the sculpture “Water and Earth” the pieces blend together creating an object of such an interesting shape that it becomes ergonomically profound. The 3-seat sofa is exhibited at the Vitra Design Museum (Weil am Rhein, Germany)
Mario Ceroli, an eclectic artist, during his long career has added to his artistic traits the role of scenographer in the film directed by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi “Addio Fratello Crudele”. The main character of the film, Annabella, has inspired Mario to such extent that he decided to attribute her name to all the creations that he did in the scenography.
The roman sculpture “Bocca della Verità”, that is a component of “Piazza d’Italia” masterpiece, is a muse inspiration of one of Ceroli’s most fascinating creations. The allusion to one of the most famous sculptures of the city of “The Great Beauty” gives to the creation the hint of eternity that is not subject to the fickleness of time passing by.