L’Infinito Blu

The show at the Triennale di Milano presents Gio Ponti’s original drawings and photographs of the company workshop where he worked together with the craftsman and workers.

Gio Ponti: L’Infinito Blu
Gio Ponti’s design for the Hotel Parco dei Principi in Sorrento has become part of the history of Italian architecture. The project involved the entire building and, in particular, in collaboration with Ceramica D’Agostino, a series of blue-and-white ceramic decorations transformed a hundred rooms, together with the lobby, the reception area, the bar and the restaurant. The decorations consisted of “mathematical and geometric” combinations of a complete series of 27 patterns which, then as now, were reproduced by hand on 20 x 20 cm maiolica tiles.

 

The exhibition presents Gio Ponti’s original drawings, with all his production notes, and with photographs of the company workshop where the architect worked together with the craftsman and workers, and there is a display of original ceramics from the time. The event also allows visitors, after about 60 years, to see a faithful reproduction of the original 27 maiolica tiles, together with 5 decorations that were never used for the Parco dei Principi. These have now been made for the first time by the master decorators of Ceramica Francesco De Maio, which in 1990 took over the former Ceramica D’Agostino, now Antiche Fornaci D’Agostino.

Gio Ponti: L’Infinito Blu, installation view at the Triennale di Milano, 2017
Gio Ponti: L’Infinito Blu, installation view at the Triennale di Milano, 2017
This is where we find Ponti’s modernity: countless possibilities of design combinations, but on one condition: that everything should be made strictly by hand, because only like this can the pattern and the colour be regenerated without ever being depleted. “Gio Ponti: Infinite Blue” is not just an exhibition that recreates a special condition, for it shows that it is always possible to breathe new life into a concept or a design project, so long as the rule is always the same: “nothing that is not first in the hands”, for hands are the most direct expression of thought.
Gio Ponti: L’Infinito Blu, installation view at the Triennale di Milano, 2017
Gio Ponti: L’Infinito Blu, installation view at the Triennale di Milano, 2017

until 5 March 2017
Gio Ponti: L’Infinito Blu
Curators
: Aldo Colonetti and Patrizia Famiglietti,
In collaboration with: Salvatore Licitra
Triennale di Milano
viale Alemagna 6, Milan

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