Umberto Riva, class of 1928, is one of the Italian masters of architecture and design and recently received the Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement from the Milan Triennale for a career spanning 60 years and projects ranging from architecture to industrial design, editorial graphics to interior design, town planning to painting and restoration to museum installations. The “E63” lamp that he designed in 1963, taking inspiration from a sculpture by Brâncuși, appears in Blade Runner 2049.

The exhibition, curated by Gabriele Neri, focuses on Umberto Riva’s design work, which developed almost involuntarily to complement his architecture and painting from the Sixties onwards. The selected pieces – lamps, furniture and graphic designs of various kinds – are part of a continuous process of material and formal experimentation, motivated by an uneasiness that gives rise to geometric, chromatic and spatial anomalies. Riva claims: “Mine is not the work of an intellectual, but that of an artisan approaching form”.

Vernissage Saturday 6 April 15.00-20.00; Sunday 7 April to Sunday 5 May 10.30-19.30 (Wednesday and Thursday 10.30-21.00).
Salone del Mobile: 9 – 14 April 10.30–21.00