Adriano Piazzesi Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Adriano Piazzesi was born in Florence on 4 July 1923. His innate talents for drawing led him almost naturally to the choice of the artistic high school in Florence where, in opposition to the gloomy atmosphere prevailing during fascism, he experienced a happy period of artistic learning thanks also to some valuable teachers, including Crepet who introduced him to the watercolor technique, an artistic expression to which he felt particularly inclined. Read the full biography

Adriano Piazzesi Biography

Adriano Piazzesi was born in Florence on 4 July 1923. His innate talents for drawing led him almost naturally to the choice of the artistic high school in Florence where, in opposition to the gloomy atmosphere prevailing during fascism, he experienced a happy period of artistic learning thanks also to some valuable teachers, including Crepet who introduced him to the watercolor technique, an artistic expression to which he felt particularly inclined.

He later attended the Faculty of Architecture in Florence. He owes the discovery of Wrightian architecture to these studies, despite the general direction of the Faculty being in favor of Le Corbusier. Also due to this contrast, a situation of profound discomfort is created for Piazzesi which makes it impossible for him to continue attending the university environment, despite the esteem and friendship that already binds him to some teachers such as Leonardo Ricci and Leonardo Savioli .

Already in 1950 - at the age of twenty-seven - he was well known in the same Faculty and among professional architecture firms for his «extraordinary ability as a freehand executor of suggestive perspectives (...): his skilful pen accomplished the miracle of transforming in effective, captivating images even the appearance of modest villas and condominium and industrial buildings of dubious quality"

[01]

. A legendary graphic talent that brings Piazzesi one step away from collaborating - collecting a series of enlightening "parapraxes" to deeply understand his sensitive and creative personality - with the overseas studios of Walt Disney and Frank Lloyd Wright.

With Enrico Cambi and Luciano E. Nustrini, he worked in the 50s and 60s on the design of some buildings, including - in addition to the project for a villa in Scarperia and the construction works of the

Crafts Exhibition

of Florence, of

Fair

and of

Triennial

of Milan – the church of

Saint Pancras

in Cavriglia. With Gianfranco Ignesti he sets up the

stands

Campari

on the occasion of

Levante Fair

of Bari (of particular interest is the intervention created for the 1955 edition).

Instead, the residence is due to his collaboration with Enrico Cambi and Gianfranco Ignesti

semi-detached house in Antella

("under evident Wrightian influence"

[02]

), and the groups of residential buildings in Florence in

via Edinburgh

and in Sesto Fiorentino in

via di Camporella

.

In 1962 at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence – still with Cambi and Nustrini – he was among the designers who participated in the

Antiques exhibition in the modern home

. On this occasion - as Carlo Cresti points out - the installation designed for the

Duplex apartment

elaborated by the group «it was composed of the articulated sequence of different spaces on three floors: it was undoubtedly the most "architectural" and stimulating proposal of the entire exhibition with the vertical separation elements made of exposed bricks and the surfaces of the wooden floors natural"

[03]

.

The following year - 1963 - together with his friend Carlo Cresti, he took part in the competition

Artemide-Domus

, presenting a project for a table lamp in plastic material depicting the ironic synthesis of the Masked Man protagonist of the famous comic of the same name. The playful and peculiarly congenial experience for Piazzesi will give the partnership the opportunity to reform a few years later in 1970. On that date "with mutual delight"

[04]

they invent

The Altar of Myths

, a double equipped seat (in plastic laminate) for living rooms combined with a partially luminescent votive module on which it is proposed to place colored perpex silhouettes of the Masked Man, Marilyn Monroe and Che Guevara. The ironic installation achieved good success and after being exhibited at the XXIV edition of

MY

(

International Furniture Exhibition

) of Monza is reported and published in various sector magazines.

Still at the end of the 60s, Piazzesi began his activity as a designer, with the project of an armchair -

Premier

(1969) –, without a metal or wooden structure, whose shape is supported and maintained by an enveloping belt. Although centered on the same design theme once tackled for Cassina by Mario Bellini (in 1967) with the seating system

932

, the family composed of armchair, sofa, coffee table and footstool designed by Piazzesi further reduces the already sparse abacus of elements adopted by the Milanese designer.

Premier

in fact, it proposes an extreme simplification of the model by using only two padded modules with a more elaborate and persuasive shape (semi-cylindrical for the seat and a lowered arch/inverted catenary for the backrest-armrest) joined by a single belt. Sober but not "serious", that is, much less "manly" industrial than Bellini's version, the engaging shapeliness of the whole makes it appear

Premier

perhaps even more captivating and receptive than the already effective Cassina production. Based on this project proposal, the Tre D company - which will later become Arketipo - was born and made its mark on the market

furniture

achieving such success as to lay the most solid foundations for a very long partnership which - although not without conflicts - will link the designer to the company for around 40 years.

Followed by notable products such as

Okay

(1970), in which Piazzesi reinterprets what i

Compasso d'Oro

Afra Bianchin and Tobia Scarpa had proposed the previous year with

Soriana

(1969). Of this latest project, also produced by Cassina, the Tuscan designer offers an almost contemporary "variation in progress" starting from the same informing concept. Better you succeed and noticeably more

glam

of the

original

, both versions - sofa and armchair - are also made more usable, as well as graceful and attractive, by being appropriately equipped with armrests: a pair of swollen lateral "rests" stabilized through an effective and intuitive design of the chromed steel structure of support of the padding (four soft blocks of shaped polyurethane foam with differentiated softness with light internal metal reinforcements and support supports).

A multi-talented talent, Piazzesi works in the

furniture

for about half a century. Often recognized (especially by experts and competitors in the sector) as an authoritative protagonist of the plastic-formal taste, he participates in countless editions of the

Furniture expo

in Milan and at the recurring exhibitions in Paris and Frankfurt, both as a product designer and as a designer of

stands

corporate (activities, the latter, of which he is undoubtedly a refined interpreter; a fact, among other things, in all likelihood carefully ignored by corporate clients).