 |
| Carlo Mollino's furniture design and polaroid |
T h e F u r n i t u r e D e s i g n e r - He designed armchairs with elongated legs, clad in black lacquer like stockings and named them “ready for love”. A side table had “stiletto heels” and a 1950s chair is so redolent of female anatomy, it’s the soft furnishing equivalent of a pair of crotch-less knickers. Imbued with these human attributes, his works have great dynamism and vigour.
 |
| Carlo Mollino - Reconstruction of casa Devalle's bedroom, 1940 |
He furnished three luxurious residences to serve as spaces in which to photograph his women—mainly local Turin prostitutes. He coated surfaces with fleshly feminine velvet, exotic furs and silks. The bed was topped with a green-mirrored headboard and a lip-shaped couch smoldered below. For his Devalle residence he created a “garconniere” – or shag pad – to match any boy’s fantasy.
 |
| Carlo Mollino - Casa Devalle, a soundproof "Shag Pad" |
 |
| Carlo Mollino -- Teatro Regio, Turin. Detail of the elliptic openings of the twelve doors and his signature floor lamp. |
E r o t i c i s m and the female body were his great inspirations. At a time of the prevailing Modernist style, Mollino preferred the curvaceous, sensual lines of Art Nouveau and Gaudi.
 |
| Carlo Mollino --Teatro Regio |
 |
| Carlo Mollino -- Polaroid and Teatro Regio |
T h e A r c h i t e c t - He established himself as a flamboyant individualist in his early practice as an architect. He rejects the purely functional, geometrically simple, architecture of some of his contemporaries as sterile and mechanical. He designs works for the private and intimate needs of individualists.
He p h o t o g r a p h e d women throughout his life and aimed to animate the solid geometry of buildings with their living, pulsing energy. In the Sixties he returned to architecture and his last public masterpiece, the Teatro Regio in Turin (1965-73) is noted for its vaulting, aerodynamic balconies.
