Joe Colombo (1930 - 1971)

Joe Colombo (Milan, 1930 - 1971)

Table game "Poker"

Laminated, stainless steel, cm 131 x 131 x 70 (h)

Game table designed in 1968 by the famous designer Joe Colombo, produced by Zanotta, with double laminate top, green cloth edged in leather on stainless steel legs, winner of the BIO 5 Ljubljana award in 1973. One of the most internationally successful examples of Italian design, it has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York.

Joe Colombo was an Italian designer and architect, born in Milan in 1930. In the early fifties he joined the nuclear painting group with Enrico Baj. He studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts and at the Politecnico di Milano. In 1961, after leaving the profession of sculptor and painter, he opened a design studio in Milan. In 1964, at the XIII Triennale di Milano he was awarded the Gold Medal.

He took part in the XIV Triennale di Milano, where in a space entirely dedicated to him, he exhibited new proposals for interior design, including the famous programmable system for living.

In 1963 he won the Gold Medal at the Milan Triennale with the acrylic table lamp, currently an integral part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Philadelphia.

In 1967 he won the Compasso d'Oro Award for the Spider lamp, produced by OLUCE. In 1968 he won the Design International Award in Chicago. In 1970 he won the Compasso d'Oro Award for an air conditioner produced by CANDY. In 1971 the Boby, produced for B-Line, won the first prize at SMAU in Milan. A crucial figure of the sixties and an example of a neo-Renaissance man of the period, able to excel in more than one sector, is Joe Colombo (Milan, 1930-1971). 

Born a painter, converted to architecture, Joe Colombo is famous above all for his innovative habitats and for his interior projects (shops, living rooms and modular kitchen blocks), as well as for a series of small-scale objects, created for personal pleasure, like his pipes. To promote a new hedonistic and personal style, its design exploited the new production technologies of the sixties (especially of the Milanese plastics industry). His work encouraged the user to actively participate in some projects, playing with the layout and modular design combination. A distinctive feature of his work is the possibility for the user to interact with his body and its needs, through changing and non-monumental objects.

In 1972, shortly after his untimely death, his project Unità arredativa globale was exhibited at the exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape held at MOMA in New York.

In 1984 he held a retrospective at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Villeneuve-d'Ascq.

From 16 September to 18 December 2005 at the Triennale di Milano there was the retrospective JOE COLOMBO Inventig the future. Currently his studio is directed by Ignazia Favata, who recently published a volume on the production of the Milanese designer.