Best Elder Statesman

A new show celebrates the career of Mario Bellini

- Jonathan Bell

Mario Bellini’s long and distinguished career spans design brands and counter-trends. As a designer who grew up in the austerity of post-war Italy, then began his career at the height of Pop and the Italian industrial boom, Bellini would be forgiven for an unrooted eclecticism. Yet what defines his work (still in progress) is a commitment to a sense of place and a sense of beauty, but bound up with a functional rigour that transcends shifts in the way we interact with places and things. As his ‘Italian Beauty’ exhibition opens at the Milan Triennale, it’s perhaps time to take stock and celebrate a lifetime in design.

This is not a retrospective, according to Bellini, but a ‘prospective’, and the 1,200 sq m show takes you through a career spanning six decades. The space is a stage for Bellini’s many and varied products, from chairs to typewriters to lamps, with seating areas placed before vast screens to give an impressive, immersive insight into a suite of his studio’s best-known buildings.