Cesare Leonardi Biography
He enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Florence in 1956, where he followed the lessons of Adalberto Libera, Ludovico Quaroni, Leonardo Savioli, with whom he graduated in 1970[1]. During the summers of 1959 and 1960 he spent a period of apprenticeship at Marcello D'Olivo's studio in Udine, where he developed an interest in the architecture of trees. In 1963 he opened a studio in Modena with Franca Stagi. Together they dealt with design, architecture and greenery until 1983. Among their best-known objects, the Nastro, Dondolo and Eco armchairs have become part of the permanent collection of museums such as the MoMA in New York[2], the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein. His activity as a photographer accompanies his entire production as a tool for documenting, investigating, designing, also taking on the character of autonomous artistic research, especially in the seventies. At the end of the sixties he began working as a sculptor, which he temporarily abandoned in the mid-eighties. Since 1983 Leonardi has started an independent professional activity focused on experimentation in the field of design and urban planning. In 1990 he moved to the house-studio in Viale Emilio Po in Modena, which he designed himself and now also houses the archives. Since 2000, having finished his professional activity, he has dedicated himself mainly to photography, sculpture and painting. In 2011 the Superintendence for Archival Heritage of the Emilia-Romagna Region declared its professional archive a "particularly important cultural asset".
