FontanaArte

Founded in 1932 from an idea by Gio Ponti, FontanaArte is one of the Italian companies that have written the “history of lighting and furnishing” in Italy and around the world. They have involved the most important architects and lighting designers, who together with the company have built a cultural project on architecture, lighting and furnishings. Timeless objects, with splendid shapes, some of which have become design classics on show in the most important museums around the world.

FontanaArte originated in an encounter between Gio Ponti (the great 20th-century maestro of Italian architecture), Luigi Fontana (entrepreneur of sheet glass) and Pietro Chiesa (a master glass artisan). FontanaArte accompanied Italy's exploration of modernity, where glass and metal expressed a new idea of beauty infused with light and transparency. The history of FontanaArte is distinguished by lamps and every type of object that brought light into the inhabited space. This timeless mission has been passed down from icon to new product.

The history of FontanaArte and its close relation to light coincides with the birth and growth of Italian design thanks to the work of Gio Ponti and his instinctive promotion of a new kind of cultural unity in the era of industrialisation. FontanaArte was founded in 1932 out of the need to experiment and explore the inexhaustible creative inventiveness felt at a time in which, especially in Milan, industrial production was deemed one of the infinite possibilities of artistic expression. As Ponti says, "Industry is the 20th-century way; it is its way of creating. In the binomial art and industry, art is the species and industry the condition." It was Ponti's idea to add the word Arte ("art" in Italian) to the new section of Luigi Fontana & C., the original company. Still now in the 21st century, art remains the key to a brand identity that exists over and above each single serially produced object. The same spirit, a mix of art and industry, has guided the recent modernisation of FontanaArte icons with LED technology. It is also found in the development of new versions and products presented in this catalogue.

Over the years, the FontanaArte range has come to include products by designers of great professional sensibility. The visions expressed during the artistic direction of Gio Ponti and Pietro Chiesa, of Max Ingrand and of Gae Aulenti are embodied in the contributions of many designers who interpreted their times, participating in the construction of the FontanaArte identity over more than 80 years. The list is long. It includes glass artisans, architects and designers whose creative approach is rooted in the identity FontanaArte wishes to preserve in order to give continuity to its special history. Among these designer can be mentioned Claesson Koivisto Rune, GamFratesi, Andreas Engesvik, Odo Fioravanti, Paola Navone, Sebastian Herkner, Carlo Colombo, Karim Rashid.

FontanaArte is now working on the meeting point between contemporaneity and historical interpretation, between technological innovation and clarity of expression, all in the name of exploring the possibilities of timeless beauty.