Gaetano Pesce, the architect and designer, was born in La Spezia, Italy, in 1939, educated at the Venice Institute of Industrial Design. During his career of four decades he has become prominent in several fields as – architecture, interior, industrial and exhibition design, urban planning, graphics and film.
During his early years, Pesce was introduced to Cesare Cassina, who took interest in his work. Cassina gave Pesce a monthly salary with which he researched materials and come up with prototypes. Over the years, their relationship deepened, as Pesce quotes: “Cassina became a kind of father to me.” Cassina helped Pesce understand that contemporary creativity was associated with the new reality of our times and not romantic ideal of art, but rather industrial production.
Pesce realised numerous projects in architecture like the Organic Building in Osaka or the Hubin Apartment in Paris.
The architect’s reputation has also been built upon exuberant experimentation in the area of industrial design and furnishings, including the development of a series of iconic chairs, tables and lamps.
Pesce has maintained long lasting relationships with landmark furniture manufactures as B&B Italia or Vitra International and has launched New York City companies Fish Design and Open Sky to develop and manufacture home design objects, lighting and jewellery for the consumer market.
Mr. Pesce’s work is represented in the permanent collections of leading museums like MoMA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In 1996 he was honoured with a career retrospective at the Pompidou Center in Paris, and most recently in 2009 with the Lawrence J. Israel Prize from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.
