This Was the 20th-Century’s Ultimate Renaissance Man

Carlo Mollino in the 1940s. Photo: Courtesy of Fulvio and Napoleone Ferrari / Museo Casa Mollino

Indie Icon: Carlo Mollino, 1905-1973

What: A Turin-born architect, photographer and designer of furniture and cars who involved himself in almost every aspect of the design world.

Carlo Mollino’s Reale table 1948 sold at Sotheby’s in 2005 for $3.824 million. Photo: Courtesy of Sotheby’s.

Fans: Furniture aficionados with deep pockets. A Mollino plywood and glass table, designed in 1948, set an auction record at $3.824 million. in 2005 as the first 20th Century piece to break the million-dollar mark, fetching $3.824 million.

Tell Me More: A jack of all trades, Carlo Mollino trained as an architect but was also a furniture, interior and automobile designer, not to mention a photographer, aviator and ski instructor.

Carlo Mollino’s 1955 Damolnar Bisiluro — or “Twin Torpedo”. Photo: Courtesy of Museo Casa Mollino.

His adventures were many: after designing a concept racecar (the 1955 Damolnar Bisiluro — or “Twin Torpedo” — he then completed the legendary Le Mans 24-hour race in it. Five years earlier, he published his treatise on downhill skiing, Introduzione al Discesismo, with 212 drawings and 200 photographs, a study of “skiing with a mathematical approach,” according to Fulvio and Napoleone Ferrari, in their book The Furniture of Carlo Mollino (Phaidon, 2006). He designed theater sets and regularly photographed his own projects, as well as portraits of women, often nude, within them. Mollino took inspiration from the Art Nouveau and Surrealist movements for his sculpted and bent wood furniture — including the record-setting table made in 1949. Unlike other Modernist designers who adopted the new mass production techniques of the day, perhaps because he had the security of his family’s wealth, his furniture designs were one-of-a-kind, usually commissions for specific projects.

Nearly all of Mollino’s architecture has been destroyed, but the apartment he designed for himself in the mid 1960’s along the River Po in his hometown has been restored as a private museum, Museo Casa Mollino. It’s a rare opportunity to see one of Mollino’s projects in the flesh and a wonderful resource to discover the oeuvre of a man who gives new meaning to the term Renaissance man. Museo Casa Mollino, Via Giovanni Francesco Napione, 2, 39-011-812-9868.

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