Description

Console table in marble and walnut, Pierluigi Spadolini, circa 1965, Italy. Fior di pesco marble, walnut. Recently a similar piece sold at Phillips auctions. Pierluigi Spadolini (April 1922, Florence–June 2000, Florence) was an Italian designer and architect. He was brother to the famous politician Giovanni Spadolini. During the 1940s and 1950s, he designed a series of furniture systems, of which his most famous were the library systems. In 1965, Pierluigi Spadolini cofounded the Istituto Superiorie per l’Industrie Artistiche (ISIA), which became a consortium of four higher education institutions dedicated to training students in the field of design, and he later joined the faculty of ISIA of Florence, directed by Angelo Maria Landi. He also became a member of the Associazione per il Disegno Industriale (ADI). Among his most well-known works are the office of The Nation (1961–1965), the Palazzo dei Congressi in Florence (1974), the Pavilion Spadolini in the Fortezza da Basso (1974–1976), and the Palace of Justice in Turin (1994–1998). Pierluigi Spadolini was also a renowned designer of boats and yachts and made important furniture design contributions, such as the plastic furniture line he designed for Kartell and the 1950s library systems, which he designed for Genzini in 1956.