Gio Ponti was the greatest European designer of the 20th century.

Eero Saarinen, while famous for his US designs, is European-born and a better designer.

His work looks like he shopped at Target.

Well, to begin with, everything in OP’s photo is ugly.

It’s kind of a sparse, Eurotrash aesthetic (?)

^ I'm sceptical of everything from the Guardian.

They're the fools that said Male Road Designers were killing Female Pedestrians.

The floor here’s striking. A bit too mod for my taste, but... really, that aside, this room is hardly special:

Marcel Breuer's better.

I dont expect DL to appreciate him, as most of you have old grandma tastes. Next.

R9 Gio Ponti is as old as our grandma.

The OP's link is a website called jerkoff.

He had a hot ashtray, but he couldn’t live forever.

Then let it stay in Europe.

Vico Magistretti. Cini Boeri. Saarinen. At least ten are better.

Dieter Rams. Ettore Sotsass. Both Vignelli's. I could go on. Gio Ponti is top ten. Inventing modernism sees to ignore the Bauhaus completely. Revisionism.

R7 looks like the childrens' and YA section of your local public library.

R16 I thought exactly the same thing.

'Modern' designers insisted they were living in the Century of The Common Man.

Therefore they celebrated cheap, factory-made design using cheap materials. No hand-made furniture or William Morris craftsmanship at all!

R7's picture reminds me of the pictures of my local public library which was built in the 1950s and demolished in the early 1990s..

Wiki tells me Gio Ponti did toilet pedestals and some hideous Brutalist monstrosities.

r9 I collect avant-garde furniture. That particular picture has the Gio Ponti stuff in a 1980's Memphis-esque scheme. Not the way he would arrange anything. Let's talk about any of the Scarpa family. Afra and Tobia, any of them.

Gio Ponti was a fantastic lamp designer.

DL has bad taste. That Gio Ponti designs public library childrens furniture is such a funny and retarded idea.

Gio Ponti designs can be easily replicated by cheap copyists in Taiwan and Malaysia and shipped to Walmart.

r18 It's a Willy Guhl planter. Brutalism isn't what you think, and Gio Ponti had very little to do with brutalism, which was mostly French and American. Look at his lamps. They are anything but dark or depressing.

r20 Troll. Have you ever owned a serious piece of modernist furniture in your life? The knock offs are gross, just to rip off poor people. The materials are fake (they can't do laminate, it's too expensive), and the proportions are always off. Wrong. The exposed parts are always too shiny and finished, and the bottoms are completely unfinished. There are exposed bolts.

Knoll, Gavina, any of the Moblers, buy yourself a real piece of furniture. Not fake stickley Target shit. Grow up. Get some taste, some style.

DL thinks this is brutalism.

Gio Ponti's brutalism.

r24 black and white pic of a building with huge windows and tons of light. It's classified as a "building in need of protection" against Philistines like yourself. Brutalism has nothing to do with being depressing, brutal, or dark. It's concrete, and it's a beautiful material.

I used to subscribe to Domus.

It was hip and it was cool. It was chic and it was hep!

[quote] Gio Ponti was the greatest European designer of the 20th century

Are you talking Early Ponti or Late Ponti?

The city inspector asked me to destroy my Willy Guhls. As if!

Is he Sophia's brother-in-law?

R27 The whole breadth of his career, especially having lived a very long life and the diversity of media he worked in and the extent of his impact within the continent of Europe and beyond.

r28 Insane Philistinism. Let me guess. Fungus? Vinegar will fix it but do not. I want a pair of his chairs for my garden.

Charrlotte Perriand before Ponti. Better than Mies, so he graffitied her house and then died in front of it.

R15 You mention that the OP's silly jerkoff article claims Ponti invented modernism while ignoring the Bauhaus.

I think the silly jerkoff article was meant for teenagers. Not connoisseurs.

[quote] Fungus? Vinegar will fix

R31 Are you talking Onychomycosis?

Vintage Willy Guhl for eternit contains asbestos. That's why. Meanwhile every design museum is allowed to keep and display theirs.

It was cheap when I first shopped in Switzerland years ago. Nobody wanted it.

R8 Bruer’s best work, especially in architecture, was in the US. So many of the German architects and designers emigrated to the US and there weren’t the creative types to replace them. The dismantling of Bauhaus by the Nazis really cut off the modernest evolution in German, and in many ways the Scandinavians did a much better job of picking up with it and running leaving German in the dust.

r33 Like Al Gore invented the internet. To ignore the Bauhaus when speaking of modernism? Albers then. Ponti was great, but inventing modernism? which extended so far beyond chairs or buildings. Teens should start with the Bauhaus when learning about modernism. Or even earlier. Hoffman. Prague Chairs, 1904.

r35 Ah, I remember something about this. The real originals are going for 5k while others are 1500 and it is the asbestos that collectors crave isn't it? They look better. The patina really is interesting on those older ones.

r36 I recently watched a video on youtube about the original Bauhaus and how they wanted to make stuff for the common German Frau, and middle class Germans completely rejected the metal and chrome and simplicity as cold, sterile and robotic. I think Dieter Rams finished that process by making the design more palatable to middle class Germans.

R36 I guess those 'creative types' who left Germany realised their brand of quirky, pseudo-intellectual, self-absorbed elitism wasn't appreciated by the new regime which wanted buildings which had some kind of grandeur and emotional charge.

This is chic, sexy, and also relaxing.

Bauhaus was a success, then the Nazis stamped it out.

R32 Perriand was too overshadowed by Le Corbusier, even though she lived a long life it was only her 21st century “rediscovery” and extracting her as a leading woman of design in the 20th century that she is recognized and celebrated. Many had forgotten her.

R41 Those chairs are Charles Eames' Spider Chairs!

Nice for a one time glance. I wouldn’t want to live with any of his designs.

R44 - what are you talking about - there’s no such thing as an Eames “spider” chair. Those Ponti chairs are vaguely like an Eames DCM, but lots of modern designs are variations of similar themes.

This statement from the Brooklyn Museum further justifies my claim, noting as I did the the squashing and demonizing of Modernism by the Nazis set back the Germans from their strong start in the earlier 20th Century, but what I didn’t really know or understand was that Mussolini actually supported and endorsed Modernism, which set the stage for it to be embraced and blossom in post war Italy.

So HE'S the one who came up with photogenically angular chairs that become excruciating uncomfortable after sitting on them for more than a few minutes.

These prewar pieces were at auction last week and are quite lovely and different from what we think of as Ponti. I really like the Pilgrim cup illustrated in the video thumbnail (looks almost Rockwell Kent), apparently the daybed didn’t sell.

[quote] … but lots of modern designs are variations of similar themes.

Ok, R46, I think R20 said—

[quote] … Gio Ponti designs can be easily replicated by cheap copyists in Taiwan and Malaysia and shipped to Walmart.

This has some wonderful images from the exhibition.

No, R48, Marcel Breuer came first. Gio Ponti stole that idea also.

Postwar Ponti obviously. Super Leggera chairs? I had a set, very elegant.

That hideous pic you posted, OP, proved you wrong with no assistance needed.

So the Georgia Museum of Art had a big exhibit in 2017 and this is an interview with a curator. This turquoise table is amazing, not in the least because it’s concave.

relatively easy to find

R55 Concave tables are very useful in homes for the senile and physically impaired.

They're also useful in preventing ill-behaved children of resting their forearms on the dinner table.

r56 You are correct. In aluminum chorme, set of 4 for 400 bucks at the Rose Bowl. Easy to find, but most of these people are full on Target Marms.

Shit no, authentic Charivari at boots and flea markets in Switzerland. Naive people don't know what they have.

*Chiavari

school chair for 12 thousand dollars.

^ rich people hustling for their fetishes.

the original Bauhaus and how they wanted to make stuff for the common German Frau, and middle class Germans completely rejected the metal and chrome and simplicity as cold, sterile and robotic.

Well, R39, I have to agree with the common German Frau.

The Bauhaus stuff was designed by pseudo-intellectual, self-absorbed elitists who were more concerned with the theory of geometry than human anatomy.

The picture at R51 and the OP have that decidedly-odd armchair with those uncomfortable-looking armrests.

[quote]r46 what are you talking about - there’s no such thing as an Eames “spider” chair.

Your FACE is a spider chair... because stupid spiders SIT on it!

R65 - that is the strangest attempt at an insult ever to appear on the DL. Which is something.

[quote] The Eames Brothers

OH DEAR!

Ray’s pronouns were she/her!

Spider Chairs break easily

Spider Chairs may be OK for 'chic' Italians but not for fat, overfed Americans.