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“It is impossible to define Enzo Mari. An artist, a philosopher, a theorist, a designer. A prophet, a utopist, a preacher, a mystic. These are just some of the many facets of a complex personality, emanations of the lucid madness and rigour that distinguish him”

Francesca Giacomelli

Born on April 27th, 1932, Enzo Mari attended the Brera academy in Milan and, at a very young age, worked in the field of Programmed Art to devote himself, from 1956 onwards, to industrial design, also experimenting with new materials. In art he has promoted the international movement New Trends. In the sixties he revolutionized the concept of design through objects useful for the so-called common people, until now excluded from a sector considered elitist. Thus were born creations that do not feel the wear and tear of time, free from fashions, whose meaning lies not only in the constant and long research work, but in the quality of the forms. His objects often arise from an intuition, e.g. Putrella, 1958, with its elementariness as well as extremely dense potential for internal cross-references and evocative strength. Mari has always looked at the needs of the human being outside the constraints of the market. He has articulated in his work the inventions of an artist and those of a designer and theorist, author of fifteen didactic and political books. His works are present in the collections of the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica in Barcelona, the Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, the Gallery of Modern Art in Zagreb, the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld, the Musée des Arts décoratifs of the Louvre in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Triennale Design Museum in Milan and other public and private collections.
He taught in several Italian universities, in Vienna and Berlin.
He was awarded with the Compasso d’Oro, the oldest and most prestigious industrial design award in the world, five times: the first in 1967 for individual design researches, the last in 2011 for his career.