CARLO MOLLINO Dining suite, from the Pavia R

Provenance
Pavia Restaurant, Cervinia, 1954; Bröhan Collection, Duesseldorf, Germany; Lot 22, Sotheby's, London, October 1991

Literature
Giovanni Brino, Carlo Mollino: Architecture as Autobiography, Milan, 1987, p. 138 for an illustration of the table;
Albrecht Bangert, Italian Furniture Design: Ideas Styles Movements, Munich, 1988, p. 79;
Carlo Mollino: l'Etrange Univers de l'Architecte, exh. cat., Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1989, p. 122;
Paola Antonelli, et al., Sitting on the Edge: Modernism Design from the Collection of Michael and Gabrielle Boyd, exh. cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1998, pls. 51 and 75

Architectural, organic, figural, sensual, are all terms easily used in the observation of a work by Carlo Mollino. As an artist, his work brilliantly manages to posses all of these elements simultaneously. In the joinery he is a master craftsman, always conscious of the architectural balance of the design. In its animation he further relays a historical sense of the organic so evident in the hand carved work at the beginning of the 20th century. His obsessive interest in the essence of the female form and its translation into shape creates a subliminal expression quite unique to Molino's designs of the period.