Where and when
Wednesday 27 January 2016, 5.30 pm
Conversations around the book.CERAMIC DESIGN. STORIES OF LANDS AND PROJECTS
Ugo La Pietra e Gianni Veneziano talk with the author Stefano Follesa.
Introduced by Marco Tonelli, curator of the exhibition Materia Prima, Fondazione Museo di Montelupo Fiorentino, Maria Pilar Lebole, Osservatorio dei Mestieri d’Arte e Oliva Rucellai, former Director of the Richard-Ginori Museum.
The design of ceramics. Storie di terre e di progetti by Stefano Follesa is a collection of testimonies and reflections on the ceramic project and, more generally, on the project of the object.
The contributions, coming in part from a series of meetings with some of the most authoritative designers, testify to a passion for an extraordinary material such as ceramics, and at the same time a renewed desire for confrontation in a complex phase for the entire design culture and especially for the design project. The theoretical essays and the report of the meetings are part of a wide debate, whose objective is the definition of new strategies and new practices for ceramic design.
The book includes works by Emmanuel Babled, Andrea Branzi, Luisa Bocchietto, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Ugo La Pietra, Ambrogio Pozzi, Luca Scacchetti and Gianni Veneziano, and contributions by Francesco Armato, Maria Pilar Lebole, Giuseppe Lotti, Paolo Pecile, Oliva Rucellai, Vittorio Amedeo Sacco and Alessio Sarri.
The initiative Storie di terre e di progetti was promoted by OMA Osservatorio Mestieri d’Arte and curated by Stefano Follesa, Giulia Gigli. Angela Muroni, Oliva Rucellai, Alessio Sarri. The book is published by Polistampa.
The conference is part of a series of meetings with artists, designers and curators around contemporary ceramics, on the occasion of the exhibition Materia Prima curated by Marco Tonelli at the Museum of Ceramics in Montelupo.
Ugo La Pietra
was born in Bussi Sul Tirino (PE) in 1938. He graduated in architecture at the Politecnico di Milano in 1964, where he began to take an interest in different artistic currents such as, for example, sign art, conceptual, social and environmental art, artist cinema, narrative art, neo-eclecticism, architecture and radical design. The early Sixties were characterized by intense research and a strong presence of photography: the artist, in fact, experimented with many expressive means. In addition to favoring design and two-dimensional works, he intervenes in urban spaces and carries out research on the territory, especially in the suburbs.
In 1967 with his poetics, “The Theories of the Disequilibrating System”, he questions himself on physical space and territory with symbolic actions, using the image as a tool to investigate the surrounding space; also carries out a careful analysis on urban design that aims to recover within the city of some spaces still usable and editable. Ugo La Pietra has directed several magazines, won the Compasso d’Oro prize in 1977 and made more than 900 solo and group exhibitions. In recent years he has been teaching and has coordinated the Department of Artistic Design for Business, which he founded, at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts.
Gianni Veneziano
Architect and Designer, in 1979 he graduated in Architecture in Florence, with an experimental thesis on the Design of Architecture and Architecture designed with Adolfo Natalini, central themes for his work between art and design. From 1979 to 1981, fundamental for his growth was the American experience in the field of architectural debate in relation to the birth of the “post-modern movement”, which shaped his first architectural experience. In 1987 in Milan, together with Prospero Rasulo, he founded Oxido, the Galleria del Progetto Arte e Architettura, which later became the trademark Oxido Zoo. Many collaborations with companies including: Gervasoni, Lumi, Sisal, Barovier and Toso, Ortolan, Fatto ad Arte, Fine Factory and others. His work is present in several galleries and museums. In 2007 he created, with Luciana Di Virgilio, the Veneziano+Team studio. The work of the studio is present in the most important trade magazines and at national and international fairs. Important is also the activity of curator of exhibitions on the theme of design, remembers the sign of designers’ for the Triennale of Milan, which presented a collection that he then donated to the Permanent Collection of the Triennale Design Museum.
Stefano Follesa
architect and designer, graduated in Architecture with Adolfo Natalini in 1988. In November 1987 he was one of the founders of the Atelier Metafora, a group of experimentation and research on the rituals of living active until 1992. Since 1996 he has been involved in industrial design and architectural design in the different scales of the project. He teaches and researches at the Department of Architecture DIDA of the University of Florence, where he teaches Interior Design. He has won numerous design contests and made exhibitions and installations in Italy and in different parts of the world. He has given lectures and courses at several foreign universities. He is author of books and publications on architecture and design and curator of exhibitions and events. He lives and works in Florence where he has his own professional studio.