Carlo Bartoli

Carlo Bartoli, born in 1931, belongs to that generation who were teenagers at the end of the war: learning from Italian masters of architecture and design of that unsettled period, such as friend and project partner Luciano Baldessari, and Marcello Nizzoli, he graduated in Milano where he opened his practice in 1960. Bartoli started with architecture and interiors, but when one of the recurrent crisis in the building industry left him short of work, he focused on furniture design. Working first on objects he himself needed, he developed his design method: starting form the identification of the limits and translating simplicity into culture. His cooperation with were-to-be reference design brands, led to important products such as the Gaia armchair by Arflex - in the permanent collection at the MOMA in New York and the design collection of the Milano Triennale - and the 4875 chair for Kartell, the first chair in the world to be entirely made of polypropylene, shown in the design collection of the National Arts Museum, Centre Pompidou in Paris.