Franco Matticchio, 1994.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
More Mari
“I would like to draw attention to shapes, in reaction to the image bombardment produced by television.”
Iela Mari, 1968
Enzo Mari met his future wife Iela at Brera Academy in Milan. Towards the end of the
sixties, Iela started creating children’s books, first alone, then together with her husband.
Later, while Enzo was busy at work designing toys, objects and furniture,
Iela became professor at Milan’s Istituto Europeo di Design and continued illustrating
books on her own. All her creations are wordless narrations of natural cycles and
playful transformations. Her revolutionary conceptual approach is clean and essential,
graphically striking and innovative. The following books are published in Italy
by Babalibri (I have included reference to the titles and publishers
of the original American editions when available)
Il palloncino rosso, 1967 (The Magic Balloon, S G Phillips)
Iela Mari’s first book, Il palloncino rosso, describes the metamorphosis
of a chewing gum bubble with a minimalist language made of white space,
black line drawings and simple red shapes.
In her following books, Iela Mari explores the world of nature with her innovative eye:
“… one needs to start with analysis in order to arrive at synthesis, not the other way around.
For example, one needs to first draw all the details in a leaf and then erase, erase, erase…”
L’uovo e la gallina, 1969, with Enzo Mari (The Chicken and the Egg, Pantheon Books)
“During the war, in Milan, we were hungry. I raised chicken, I know how chicks are born!
I also love looking at the growth of my green plants. The landscape doesn’t interest me.
What I enjoy, is to lay on the ground in the woods, to feel an ant climbing,
feel myself being pushed by the roots.”
La mela e la farfalla, 1970, with Enzo Mari (The Apple and the Moth, Pantheon Books)
Hopefully, this post will be followed by one on Mari's later books,
if I can get a hold of them! Some are currently published in Spain and Japan...
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Sunday Safari - Peeps into Zoo-land
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Enzo Mari's playful simplicity
The shapes of toys must be based on archetypal images, and these images must be realized
with the highest possible quality and not in the style of “children’s drawings.”
Mari is one of the most respected and influential Italian product designers, and also
a thoughtful visual artist, teacher and writer. At 22, while working at my first
graphic design job in the milanese studio of Andrea Rovatti, a former student of Mari,
I had the privilege of meeting the great man. Alas! at the time I knew that he was famous,
but was unaware of his rationalist design philosophy and body of work.
But I was familiar with at least one of his creations, the Sedici Animali puzzle,
since it had been given to me as a child.
This wooden toy was designed in 1957 for the Italian company Danese, and has gone
through a number of re-editions in different materials since. At first, I was a bit surprised
when I saw the hefty price tag (341 euros) of the contemporary limited edition reissue
of this modernist classic. But then again, these lovely oak animals are a children’s toy,
a vintage design icon and a piece of modern sculpture all-in-one! And putting
the puzzle back together is always a fun challenge, at least for me...
Mari also designed the Sedici Pesci variation.
Using the same 16 animals, Mari went on to create the limited edition children’s book
quantity, weight and balance, has recently been reprinted by the excellent
Italian publisher Corraini (pet peeve: on their website they translated the title in english
“The Swing”, while it’s clearly a see-saw.) Also, it's fun to see that Mari's choice of
cover colors breaks a well established graphic design taboo: the infamous red text
on green combination. He was a famous provocateur, so maybe he did it on purpose!
Mari’s love of simple, archetypal natural shapes also espresses itself
in his large 1965 serigraphs:
Quattro, la pantera.
Otto, l’oca. Both are on sale at Danese's online shop.
1965 was also the year of The Fable Game, an inventive children’s book-game consisting
of 46 simple animal and natural figures represented on both sides of six separate boards.
These can be pieced together in an endless variety of combinations, stimulating
creativity, storytelling and imaginative play. The Fable Game has also been reissued
by Corraini. In 2007 the publisher organized a nice exhibition at la Casina di Raffaello
in Rome, where the game was enlarged child-size, becoming a small labyrinth
or theatre stage that children could rearrange and reinvent at will.
