ICO PARISI
Domenico “Ico” Parisi (b. 1916, Palermo, Italy – d. 1996, Como, Italy) was an Italian modernist designer and architect. As a young adult, he studied construction in Como and graduated in 1934. Shortly after graduating, he apprenticed with the influential Italian Modern Movement architect Giuseppe Terragni, a prominent representative of the 1920's Rationalist architecture movement. Parisi’s aesthetic was formed largely from his 1936 participation in a photographic architectural study for the magazine Quadrante of the seminal Italian Modernist building Casa del Fascio, an administrative building in Como designed with a strict rationalist approach by Terragni.
In 1940, Ico Parisi was deployed to the Russian front in the Italian army. He was discharged in 1943 and returned to Como. In 1945, he organized the first modernist furniture exhibition in Como where he met Luisa Aiana, a student of Gio Ponti at the Politecnico di Milano.
They married in 1947 and soon after founded the studio, La Ruota, in which they collaborated on design and architectural projects. In 1949, the couple moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, where Ico studied architecture from 1949 until 1952 at the Institute Atheneum under Italian rationalist architect Alberto Sartoris.
Parisi considered himself a Renaissance artist, interested in all forms of art. He did not want to be labeled as only an architect, industrial or furniture designer, painter, photographer, or installation artist, even though he pursued all these activities during his more than 50 years of creative life, both independently and with his wife, Luisa. Between 1948 and 1950, Parisi devoted himself to the study of furnishing elements and furniture design, and in 1951, he started establishing friendships and collaborations with artists, designers, and architects such as Lucio Fontana, Francesco Somaini, Bruno Munari, Mario Radice, Fausto Melotti, and Gio Ponti. By the mid-1950s, Parisi had become one of the most influential Italian furniture designers, with a unique modern aesthetic that incorporated wood shaped in curvaceous and organic forms. In 1954, Ico Parisi, in collaboration with Silvio Longhi and Luigi Antonietti, won the gold award in the X Triennale di Milano designing the Living Room Pavilion. Ico Parisi collaborated with many important manufacturers of the time, including Singer & Sons, Altamira, MIM Roma, Cassina, and Cappellini. Parisi’s long-term work for Cassina resulted in some of his most iconic designs: model 813 Uovo or ‘egg chair’, model 691, and model 839 chairs (both nominated for Compasso d’Oro in 1955).
Among the architectural projects that better represent Ico Parisi’s aesthetic approach, composition, and the integration of art and architecture, are Casa Carcano in Maslianico (1949), in which he involved painter Mario Radice and ceramicist and artist Fausto Melotti; Casa Notari at Fino Mornasco (1950), also in collaboration with Mario Radice; the four Cuomo houses built in the neighborhood of Monteolimipino during the early 1950s: Casa Bini, Casa Zucchi, Casa Bertacchi, and Casa Boligiana, where Parisi integrates architecture, design, and fine art built around prewar architectural rationalism; the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture in Sondrio (1953); Studio and Casa Parisi in Como (1958), in which he incorporated mosaic floors designed by Lucio Fontana and included many decorative objects by Somaini and Munari; and Casa Orlandi in Erba (1966).
The late 1960s marked a precise turning point in his design research. With Contenitoriumani, created in collaboration with the sculptor Francesco Somaini and presented for the first time at the Milan Furniture Fair in 1968, Parisi embarked on a new path of investigation aimed at defining a utopian-existential idea of living. The culmination of his design and existential research came between 1974 and 1976 with "Operazione Arcevia", addressed in a collective and interdisciplinary manner and aimed at designing an entire community. The work was presented at the 76th Biennale of Venice and subsequently exhibited at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome (1979). This strongly utopian socio-urban experience gave rise to his subsequent graphic research, which became the theme of innumerable collective and personal exhibitions.
