Italian Design. The beauty of everyday life between Italy and Argentina

On the occasion of the exhibition “Italian Design. The beauty of everyday life between Italy and Argentina” curated by Silvana Annicchiarico, Alias will be in the spotlight with the iconic spaghetti chairs by Giandomenico Belotti, the second chair by Mario Botta and the light chair by Riccardo Blumer.From 22 September 2022 to 29 January 2023, at the Museo Nacional de Arte Decorativo in Buenos Aires.  
The National Museum of Decorative Art and the Italian Cultural Institute of Buenos Aires present the exhibition “Italian Design. The beauty of everyday life between Italy and Argentina”. 
From 23 September 2022 to 29 January 2023 some of the most significant and representative objects in the history of Italian design from the post-war period to the present day will be on display. The Italian Cultural Institute of Buenos Aires, promoter and organiser of the event, commissioned Silvana Annicchiarico to curate the project, with the aim of providing an essential and articulated panorama of the main evolutionary lines that have characterised the history of Italian design from 1945 to the present day. 

 

According to the curator, the objects in the exhibition have been selected for the originality of their design, the innovation of technologies or materials and their ability to capture and represent the taste and culture of a specific era, offering a testimony of how design embodied, in Italy in the second half of the 20th century, the democratic dream of bringing beauty into everyone's life.

The exhibition is segmented into chronological sections covering the major phases of contemporary Italian history. It brings together pieces by world-famous designers, from Gio Ponti to Ettore Sottsass, Michele De Lucchi, Vico Magistretti, Bruno Munari, Gaetano Pesce and Marco Zanuso, and presents three iconic Alias chairs among selected objects: Giandomenico Belotti's spaghetti chair, which is a symbol in the history of design, is the first of the Alias chairs, in the collection since 1979. 
The structure is in painted or chromed steel; seats and backrests are produced in the characteristic PVC rod weave, which suggests unexpected tactile and visual experiences. 

The seconda, designed by Mario Botta in 1982, is characterized by geometry and essentiality. The painted steel structure coexists with the perforated steel sheet seat, while the backrest is made up of two simple cylindrical elements in black polyurethane. 
And laleggera chair, Compasso d’Oro 1998, designed by Riccado Blumer. The highest expression of technology applied to design, laleggera is a stackable seat that is the result of the combination of a solid traditional material, solid wood, and the more contemporary and lightweight expanded polyurethane with which the structure is filled. 
Threee icons of Italian design that demonstrates that the quality of the project goes beyond the design and its form, and that it involves materials, production technologies and technical solutions in a profound and complex way. 
The five chronological sections into which the exhibition is divided are:1945-1963 The Post-War Period, Reconstruction and the Economic Boom1964-1972 Object Democracy and Consumer Fetishes1973-1983 The crisis

and the communication of emotions1984-1998 After modernity1999-2022 The new millennium and design as a mass profession An innovative aspect of the exhibition is to establish a dialogue between the icons of Italian design and significant pieces of Argentine design, so that the visitor can directly appreciate the affinities and differences, as well as the evolutions and transformations of certain objects or furniture in both cultures, called upon to confront each other through the artefacts that populate everyday life. 

Diseño Italiano: La belleza de lo cotidiano entre Italia y Argentina23
September 2022 – 29 January 2023

Museo Nacional de arte decorativo