To those that know, Italian lighting designer Angelo Lelii is an icon, however his title is probably not as extensively acquainted as these of his Twentieth-century friends – from Achille Castiglioni to Gae Aulenti. However Lelii, who based the lighting firm Arredoluce within the Forties, exerted a big affect on modernist lighting design that endures to this present day, and his items are as sought-after as ever.
Angelo Lelii and Arredoluce
Pendant lamp ‘12452’ by Angelo Lelii, 1955, from Antiqua Gallery, Athens
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Antiqua Gallery, Athens. Photograph by Dimitris Lazarou)
Born in Ancona, Italy, round 1911-1915 (sources dispute the date), he studied at ISIA (Superior Institute of Industrial Artwork) on the College of Ornamental Arts in Monza, on the outskirts of Milan. Fascinated by lighting and in pursuit of design with clear strains, utilising new applied sciences, Lelii started to create lamps in 1943 within the basement of his dwelling in Monza. In 1946, he marketed his lighting designs within the pages of Domus journal, a transfer that might catalyse the formation of his model Arredoluce the next 12 months.
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Antiqua Gallery, Athens. Photograph by Dimitris Lazarou)
On the eighth Triennale di Milano in 1947, the worldwide artwork and design exhibition, Lelii exhibited a geometrical and minimalist flooring lamp. The steel design featured shaded lights on three adjustable arms held aloft; as if an angular Alexander Calder cellular had become a lighting object. The work made such an impression on the exhibition that it got here to be identified merely because the ‘Triennale’ flooring lamp, and stays maybe Lelii’s best-known design.
The Fifties had been a very fertile post-war interval for Italian design, and as Arredoluce grew in standing, the corporate began to collaborate with main abilities of the day, together with Franco Albini, Achille Castiglioni, Gio Ponti, Nanda Vigo and Ettore Sottsass.
‘Butterfly’ flooring lamp, 1957
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Antiqua Gallery, Athens. Photograph by Dimitris Lazarou)
The designs from Lelii and his collaborators grew to become identified for purposeful and technical improvements, together with adjustable articulated arms (as with the ‘Triennale’ flooring lamp), counterweights, pivoting heads, hid wiring, seamless welds and compact transformers. All this enabled the lights to answer the varied and shifting wants of latest home and workplace interiors.
‘Perforated Stars’ desk lamps (pair), Fifties, from Carpenters Workshop Gallery
(Picture credit score: Adrien Millot)
Visually, the glossy and stylish designs – pared-back but sculptural, sensible but gently playful – helped outline the fashionable Italian aesthetic. The lights had been fastidiously crafted somewhat than mass-produced, and harnessed – amongst different supplies – opaline glass, brass and aluminium.
Lighting mixed with artwork and engineering
Desk lamp ‘12398’, 1952, from Antiqua Gallery
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Antiqua Gallery, Athens. Photograph by Dimitris Lazarou)
Lelii has been praised for taking an strategy to lighting that synthesised artwork, engineering and environment. His different key designs embody the ‘Stella’ ceiling mild (Fifties) – a constellation of softly glowing spheres suspended from brass arms that has been reinterpreted and echoed by many designers since – and the shocking ‘Cobra’ desk lamp (1964), a futuristic design primarily based on the picture of a cobra swallowing its prey entire.
‘Cobra’ desk lamp, 1962, from Antiqua Gallery
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Antiqua Gallery, Athens. Photograph by Dimitris Lazarou)
Following Lelii’s loss of life in 1979, Arredoluce dissolved – although it was later revived underneath lighting model Auralis. Lelii’s designs stay extremely collectable, exhibited and bought by galleries together with Nilufar, Carpenters, Antiqua and Facet Gallery.
Key works by Angelo Lelii
‘Triennale’ flooring lamp, by Angelo Lelii, mannequin 12128, Italy, circa 1947
With three adjustable lights that could possibly be flexibly organized in several configurations, this minimalist ‘Triennale’ flooring lamp got here in numerous muted hues to go well with inside tastes, and bought its title from being exhibited on the VIII Triennale di Milano. It was primarily crafted in brass or chrome-plated metal, with aluminium lighting fixtures. One among Lelii’s earliest designs, it is usually his most enduring – and collectable.
‘Stella 12’ ceiling lamp in brass and glass, 1980
‘Stella’ was a sequence of chandeliers comprising lights in spherical opal glass fixtures connected to radiating brass arms organized in numerous star-like compositions. The most typical format featured six lights, although variations had been made with between 4 and 12 arms.
‘Perforated Stars’ desk lamps (pair), 1950
This uncommon desk lamp was characterised by the small star-shaped perforations within the lacquered steel shade (‘stellina’ means ‘little star’ in Italian). The shade will be lifted up from the brass base to disclose the softly glowing mild beneath. It’s stated to have been included within the array of lights that Arredoluce despatched to the Kennedy household, the celebrities maybe a nod to the American flag.
‘Polifemo’ or ‘Eye’ flooring lamp by Angelo Lelii for Arredoluce, Italy, Fifties
Lelii generally made anthropomorphic or zoomorphic references together with his designs, notably with the ‘Eye’ lamp, which was also called ‘Polifemo’ after the Italian title for the one-eyed big (Cyclops) from Greek mythology. The design centres on a spherical, eyeball-like mild fixture, which pivots inside a socket on a slender steel pole. Lelii designed completely different variations, together with a chrome mild with the ‘eyeball’ on prime, a three-bulb association with a marble base, and a desk lamp.
Angelo Lelii, “Cobra” Desk Lamp, Brass, Steel, Italy, 1962
Drawing on the identical visible language because the Eye lamp, the Cobra design is impressed by the best way these venomous snakes devour their prey entire, and flare their necks out to type a hood. A vertical brass fixture holds a spherical highlight in its center, which – just like the Eye design – pivots in its socket.
