GAETANO PESCE (ITALIAN 1939-2024) FOR FISH DESIGN

GAETANO PESCE (ITALIAN 1939-2024) FOR FISH DESIGN
CHILD'S 'CROSBY' CHAIR, DESIGNED C. 1998
resin with steel pins
50.5cm high, 40cm wide, 28cm deep (19 7/8in high, 15 ¾in wide, 11in deep)
The Steve Allison Collection.
GAETANO PESCE: BREAKING THE MOULD WORKS FROM THE STEVE ALLISON COLLECTION Known for his innovative vision and radical designs, Gaetano Pesce has had a significant influence on the history of contemporary design. As an architect, artist and designer, Pesce’s work challenges the boundaries between these disciplines, as he developed his own bold aesthetic in the use of vibrant colours, experimental materials and inventive organic forms. He particularly asserted the connections between the individual and society in his designs, as a response to the time we live in: ‘Designers have to understand they are practising something that is maybe better than art. Because art goes to the gallery, goes to the museum. But design goes to families. Objects stay inside the family and people are in contact with them every minute of the day. That is very, very powerful.’ (Gaetano Pesce, 1 January 2023, see Glenn Adamson, Gaetano Pesce: The Complete Incoherence, Monacelli Press, New York, 2023, p.294) Born in La Spezia in Italy in 1939, Pesce studied architecture at the University of Venice. After graduating in 1965 he began investigating industrial manufacturing processes, seeking to humanise them through experimentation, variation and his own colourful expression. His investigations in the use of new materials such as resin and polyurethanes broke the mould, creating unique art-design pieces that invited flaws as part of the design process, as can be seem in the Moss and Spaghetti range vases (lots 408 and 408), which celebrate the uncertainty of their manufacture. This ideology, that runs against standardisation, broke with the modernist philosophy of the period that saw the idea of perfection as the ideal outcome, setting Pesce on a radical and ground-breaking course. Herbert Muschamp of the The New York Times described Pesce as ‘the architectural equivalent of a brainstorm’. Pesce’s well-known architectural projects include the Organic Building in Osaka, Japan, a vertical garden building with a complex concealed hydration system to sustain plant growth, where the ‘co-existence of greenery, architecture, and human beings’ is central. The interior architecture of the TBWA/Chiat/Day’s offices in New York (1994) was another important commission and was conceived as an early ‘workplace village’ with an experimental layout, described at the time as ‘the furthest flight from the rectangle ever achieved in office design’. (Architectural Review, January 1995). Grey cubicles were replaced in Pesce’s bright colours, with playful doors featuring dripping handles (Lot 451) and colourful communal tables and stools (lots 449, 450). Likewise his furniture is charged with deeper meaning, as well as humorous elements, that range from the whimsical Crosby chairs (lots 410, 411, 414) with their anthropomorphic qualities to the Tramonto sofa that pays homage to the New York skyline at sunset (lot 459). Across a career of over 55 years, Pesce has challenged the orthodoxy of design, instilling his own radical vision with a mischievous grin. Steve Allison’s extensive collection – one of the most significant in private hands in the UK – represents all of Pesce’s philosophies and his hopes for a future filled with creativity, innovation and humour – values that Allison himself valued in his own work as a photographer and in his career as a graphic designer. The current selection represents approximately half of Allison’s collection of Pesce – with a further selection to be sold in the October 2024 edition of Modern Made.