NEW YORK — Gaetano Pesce (1939-2024) has been described as a radical, one-of-a-kind designer who bent the rules and made his own. A product of the Italian Radical movement in the 1960s, he created groundbreaking works that were colorful, cheerful, and designed to make people smile.
Born in La Spezia, Italy, he studied architecture and design in Venice under modern masters such as Carlo Scarpa before emigrating to the United States in 1980. He set up shop in New York City, where cutting-edge designs like his found favor, and created pieces for Italian companies as well as his own brands in New York. He was best known for embracing bold colors as well as playing with new forms and experimenting with new materials.
“He was really a remarkable character,” said Philip Smith, a director at Lyon & Turnbull in London and a specialist in Modern art, design and studio ceramics. “He was always coming up with new ideas. He’s been an inspiration to a lot of people within the design sphere.”
One of the top prices on the LiveAuctioneers platform for his work belongs to an oversized floor lamp that incorporates social commentary by Pesce. A circa 1970-1971 Moloch floor lamp-sculpture, produced by Bracciodiferro in Genoa, Italy, was designed to be several times the size of a normal lamp.
Named for a Canaanite god and meant to call attention to American consumerism’s insatiable appetite for more and bigger objects, Pesce reportedly said of it, “Moloch was conceived for a practical need: to illuminate large American skyscrapers.” An example attained a robust price of €85,000 ($94,730) plus the buyer’s premium in December 2022 at Il Ponte Casa d’Aste Srl.
The auction market has been strong for Pesce, but many of his works have fairly reasonable values and have remained accessible to most buyers. Following his passing in April 2024, prices began to climb for his works. “I think there has been a shift already taking place,” Smith said, pointing out that certain Pesce chairs that once went for $1,000 to $2,000 are starting to sell for $2,500 to $3,000 and up. “His work will become more collectible as time goes on; his importance is starting to really be seen, and we have seen that his price points are starting to rise.”
In Lyon & Turnbull’s April 2024 Modern Made auction, two dozen pieces by Pesce crossed the block, several handily surpassing prices they brought when auctioned years earlier. A Waffle table in poured resin and enameled steel that Pesce designed for the New York ad agency Chiat/Day earned £8,000 ($10,470) plus the buyer’s premium in that sale. The consignor, photographer and graphic designer Steve Allison, had bought the table at a Wright auction in 2009 for $2,700.
Pesce let his playful nature shine through in his furniture designs. A rainbow-colored Unica armchair for Meritalia in Italy made €52,000 ($57,947) plus the buyer’s premium in May 2023 at Pandolfini Casa D’Aste. Looking like he took multiple cans of Silly String and sprayed them over a chair, Pesce used polychrome PVC piping in ways never before imagined. Connecting pieces of green, orange, blue, purple, and yellow PVC, he formed a sculpture-turned-chair that asks viewers to consider their preexisting notions of what a chair is and what it should look like.
One of Pesce’s most notable attributes was his willingness to embrace and experiment with new materials for furniture. Instead of relying on traditional Italian materials such as wood and marble, he proved himself to be forward-thinking again and again. Injection-molded resin was a particular favorite of his. Even in a series, each piece was never precisely alike, as the nature of pouring resin allowed for individual differences.
“The materials were critical to what he was doing; he was always looking for new materials and new ways of using them,” Smith said. A fine example is a 1991 Massada floor lamp in polychromed resin that sold for $40,000 plus the buyer’s premium at Wright in December 2023. “He wanted to make things that everyone could understand and everyone could use, not just the elite,” he said, adding, “He kind of thrived on imperfection.”
In 1980, Pesce began teaching at the Pratt Institute in the New York City borough of Brooklyn and accepted a residency there in 1984, during which he tested prototypes of a new poured resin chair to create an organically-shaped piece of furniture. It took nine tries to get the prototype just right — to create a chair solid enough to hold its form under the weight of the sitter, yet comfortable enough to sit in for an extended time. Named after the institute, Pesce debuted the chair that year. A 1984 example performed well in June 2023, bringing €22,000 ($24,520) plus the buyer’s premium at Quittenbaum Kunstauktionen GmbH.
Pesce added quirky, fun elements to his designs to invite people to connect with them. Often, faces are visible in his furniture. In one example of a Pratt chair, he added a profile of two faces on one side as well as the imprint of a hand on the back of the chair. The latter reportedly is a statement on the need for human hands to create furniture.
“In a lot of his works, you can see faces, because he’s always looking to communicate with people, and there’s a kind of wry and quirky humor going on,” Smith said. “He was always looking to allow the viewer to interact with and question his work.”
Pesce’s large furnishings are best suited to post-war and modernist homes, but his smaller pieces can be incorporated into any decor. A cobalt-blue Moss vase that he designed for one of his own companies, the eponymously-named Fish Design (the Italian word ‘pesce’ means ‘fish’), brought £750 ($980) plus the buyer’s premium in April 2024 at Lyon & Turnbull.
“It’s a classic Pesce sort of piece, using this kind of material which he had been using for decades by this point, but he found a new way to use it,” Smith said, adding that Pesce was all about making furniture and objects that were unique and did not strive for sameness and perfection. “This was something just to be imperfect but individual, and to stand out,” Smith said. “These small pieces are really desirable and loved by a lot of people.”
Pesce shunned machine-like perfection in favor of designing pieces that ripple with color, energy, and humor and embrace the natural beauty found in imperfection. Like his furniture, Gaetano Pesce went against the grain.
