The artists of the Orodautore Museum

The Orodautore Museum collection is the result of the work of dozens of artists, architects, designers, fashion designers and master goldsmiths. Each author has interpreted gold according to their own sensibility, transforming it into wearable sculpture, graphic sign, symbolic object or visionary ornament.

A self-taught artist, during the 1970s he began an intense exploration of the free juxtaposition of objects and figures within fantastic, suspended atmospheres, inspired by Neodada research and Pop Art.

In these years he experimented with different pictorial techniques, combining fluorescent colours, decalcomania, collage and photographic transfers.

During the 1980s he received his first official recognition, taking part in the Biennale di Venezia in 1982 and in the Quadriennale in Rome in 1985.

The 1993 retrospective at Palazzo Reale in Milan presented an important core of works retracing his entire artistic journey.

His fantastic mature landscapes remain well known, characterised by vivid, brilliant colour and a highly original pictorial technique.

His artistic path draws on his human and life experience, which took him as a sailor along the routes of the Americas and the East. A teacher at an art high school, he later left teaching to devote himself first to painting and then to an abstract-structuralist kind of sculpture that develops the theme of the line and bundles of lines.

In his works, such as those in the Church of San Michele in Fidenza or in Gubbio, the artist introduced active steel “lines” that lead the viewer through space. A conceptual artist who expresses himself through manual making, his works interact with visitors.

In 1972 he held his first solo exhibition in Milan, then showed in Turin and Venice in 1977, and in Cairo in 1979. In 1990 he exhibited in Vienna, earning significant acclaim. His works were later presented at Spazio Temporaneo in Milan in 2004 and in his native Cagliari at the Exma Exhibition Centre in 2005.

Born in Piacenza in 1934, he is one of the most influential Italian fashion designers and entrepreneurs in the world, founder of Giorgio Armani Spa (1975) and creator of a true brand universe ranging from clothing and accessories to fragrances, eyewear and interiors (Armani Casa).

After his beginnings with Hitman by Nino Cerruti, he revolutionised clothing by freeing it from stiffness and formal conventions, imposing an essential, refined and everyday style.

His close relationship with cinema, collaborations with the world of sport (Olimpia Milano, the Italian national team) and recognition from museums and international awards have consolidated his status as a living legend of fashion.

With the Fondazione Armani he promotes research and culture in fashion, confirming a vision that merges elegance, innovation and responsibility.

She was one of the most important Italian women architects on the international stage. She designed landmark museum projects such as the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the set-up of the Musée National d’Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the Museu d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona.

Her work also includes the Gallery for Temporary Exhibitions at the Triennale Milano, the Government Palace of San Marino, the Palavela in Turin and various Italian institutional premises abroad.

Active as well in interior and industrial design and theatre scenography, she received numerous awards, including the title of Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur (1997).

In 2012 – the year of her death – Milan dedicated Gae Aulenti Square to her, now one of the symbols of the contemporary city.

Born in Arezzo in 1916, he died in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2001. He remained in his home city until the age of eleven, before emigrating with his family to Argentina.

He became one of the greatest Argentine sculptors, always in love with his homeland, Tuscany, a land he never forgot.

After study trips in the Americas and Europe, he received numerous awards for his stone and plaster sculptures, among them the Gran Premio de Honor Presidente de la Nación Argentina and the National Prize at the Biennale of São Paulo.

A multifaceted artist, he was a deep connoisseur of different techniques, which he mastered with great skill: he worked in bronze, stone, wood and ceramics.

Alongside an extensive graphic output, in his later years he also devoted himself to painting. In 1995 he illustrated Búsqueda, a poem by Jorge Luis Borges.

In 1988 the Libero Badii Museum in Buenos Aires was dedicated to him.

His works have been exhibited in major museums in Mexico, Brazil, Canada, the United States, France, Sweden and Spain.

He is an eclectic architect specialised in interior architecture: highly versatile, he moves from design to the realisation of shops, showrooms, restaurants and department stores around the world.

For Pitti Immagine Uomo in 2007 he created a set-up that transformed the Sala della Ronda in Florence into a bright space without separations or voids.

He has specialised in residential architecture, and his projects have been published in leading sector magazines such as World Space Design and World Interior Design.

His research focuses on the formal use of innovative materials such as Corion and on the conversion of industrial buildings, as in one of his most recent works, the Sushi Su restaurant in Padua, originally an old warehouse.

He came to jewellery design after radically rethinking the “Blue Point” jewellery stores from a conceptual and architectural point of view.

Coming from a family traditionally devoted to the art of stone, he studied in his hometown and specialised in Carrara, where he encountered white marble, which together with travertine became his main sources of inspiration.

From 1984, after several years of teaching, he devoted himself entirely to sculpture, preferring monumental forms while preserving the refinement and preciousness of the great sculptural tradition of Siena.

Many of his works are installed in historical spaces, such as the fountains in Piazza Artemio Franchi in Siena and in Piazza Matteotti in Rapolano Terme. In collaboration with Pietro Cascella he worked with leading Italian and foreign sculptors on the collective work Campo del Sole in Tuoro sul Trasimeno, one of the most important environmental sculpture projects in Italy.

An Italian fashion designer, she signed at a very young age a prêt-à-porter collection for Emilio Schuberth in 1966. She later worked with other famous fashion creators such as Roberto Capucci and Rocco Barocco.

In 1972, after founding her own fashion house, she presented her first personal collection in Florence, immediately standing out for an extraordinarily feminine style.

Her name remained especially linked to her “doll woman”, to the wide, almost dancing lines that move around the body.

Today the “Laura Biagiotti” brand includes two prêt-à-porter collections a year and a series of licences covering eyewear, scarves, ties, shoes, bijoux, bags and lines for men, children and teenagers.

A Florentine artist (1916–2007), he devoted himself chiefly to sculpture, medal-making, engraving and goldsmithing, with works spread across Italy and abroad.

In his “animalier” works he often tackled fable-like themes, such as the Giant Bee or the Cunning Fox.

Among his most significant works are the bronze Bees in San Marino and the church doors in Civitella in Val di Chiana, which intertwine biblical episodes with the memory of the massacre perpetrated there on 29 June 1944.

A medalist and mint engraver for the Republic of San Marino, he also created goldsmith works for the church of San Francesco in Arezzo and for the Prepositura di San Michele Arcangelo in Chiusdino, as well as monumental sculptures in cities such as Cagliari, Prato, Sansepolcro, Dieppe and Providence.

The Blumarine brand was founded in 1977 in Carpi (Modena) by spouses Anna Molinari and Gianpaolo Tarabini. The name comes from the couple’s favourite colour combined with their love of the sea. In 1980 the brand appeared for the first time on the Milan catwalks. The first Blumarine boutique opened in Via della Spiga in Milan in 1990.

Blumarine is the historic brand of the Blufin group and is fully counted among the most prestigious names in Italian fashion. Its strong success and appreciation by consumers have led to a constant and progressive extension of the product range through licence agreements that today complete a wide offer in clothing, accessories, homeware and cosmetics.

In November 2019 Blufin was fully acquired by Marco Marchi, founder and president of Liu Jo, in an operation that created “Eccellenze Italiane”, a holding company bringing together high-end brands.

An Italian fashion designer born in Florence in 1948, after a brief experience in London she began her career in 1971 by opening her first boutique in Florence, where she presented garments of her own design under the label You Tarzan Me Jane.

The brand was noticed and acquired by GFT (Gruppo Finanziario Tessile, which also owned Armani and Valentino); in this period she carried out extensive research on stretch fabrics, which would later make her famous.

She subsequently bought back her brand and created her line Chiara Boni “La Petite Robe”, featuring stretch jersey dresses highly appreciated by international stars and personalities, especially in New York, where the brand shows twice a year.

A sculptor and jewellery and medal designer, he trained at the Istituto d’Arte in Naples.

Since 1960 he has taken part in numerous national and international exhibitions, including the Quadriennale in Rome in 1969. He taught for many years at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples.

As a jewellery designer he has received prizes and recognition in many jewellery and medal competitions: in Arezzo in 1964, in Vicenza in 1975, in Milan from 1966 to 1978 and in Stockholm in 1979.

An Italian manufacturing company founded in 1857 and based in Alessandria, created by Giuseppe Borsalino and famous for its iconic men’s and women’s hats distinguished by the Borsalino brand.

On 4 April 1857 Giuseppe Borsalino opened a workshop specialising in the production of felt hats. In 1900 the company won the Grand Prix at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, a major quality award that brought it worldwide fame, including in Hollywood’s star system, with its eccentric bowlers.

In 2011–2012 the Borsalino brand created a jewellery line in collaboration with artisan Flacone, transforming its celebrated creations into jewels.

Its hats thus became rings, pendants, earrings and men’s jewellery.

In July 2018 the Borsalino maison was definitively acquired by Haeres Equita.

An architect and designer, he was born in Florence in 1938 and lives and works in Milan. In 1966 he was among the founders of the radical Florentine group Archizoom and, from the 1970s, focused on the theoretical and design themes of the “New Design”.

In 1983 he founded and directed Domus Academy, the first international post-graduate design school, consolidating a leading role in education.

He was a member of the board of the École Supérieure de Création Industrielle “Les Ateliers” in Paris and of the EEC Commission for the development of design in Europe.

Among his most important projects are urban and infrastructural interventions such as the reconfiguration of the Berlin Wall, the Mitsubishi megaproject for Tokyo Bay, the West Manhattan waterfront and a pavilion for Expo Osaka.

In Arezzo he designed the new Galleria Comunale d’Arte Contemporanea in Piazza San Francesco (1987) and contributed to the refurbishment of Palazzo della Fonte, in front of the Pieve di Santa Maria (2012–2014).

He was an architect close to Radical Design research and for many years a lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Florence.

His artistic activity began with ceramics – his “architecture plates”, presented at the Biennale di Venezia in 1978, are famous – and developed through spatial interventions and exhibition design, such as the project for the Rotonda degli Angeli at the University of Florence and the exhibition spaces in Arezzo for Unoaerre and for the Centro Affari.

Nourished by the experiences of radical movements and Global Tools between the late 1960s and early 1970s, his work recovers a strong creative freedom, made of symbols, subtle irony and the use of “poor” materials.

Among his many awards, the prize of the Salon International de l’Architecture in Paris in 1991 stands out.

He is a multifaceted artist of international renown who works in sculpture, printmaking and jewellery.

His early figurative and expressionist works bear the marks of his experience in the war of liberation in Val di Chiana, during which he lost a hand.

He favours materials such as marble, alpaca, silver and especially bronze, with works housed in museums, churches and public and private collections in Italy and abroad.

Among his major exhibitions are shows at Palazzo Reale in Milan, the Tadin Museum i in Lovere and Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, as well as participation in important international jewellery exhibitions.

A Sicilian sculptor and painter, he is considered one of the most refined sculptors of the twentieth century.

Trained between Rome and Milan, where he attended the courses of Marino Marini, he developed a language influenced by Moore, Constructivism and the research of Pevsner, Brâncuși and Gabo, characterised by linear and volumetric rhythms and curves that coil into circles and ellipses.

From the 1930s he took part in major exhibitions such as the Quadriennale di Roma and the Biennale di Venezia, later showing in numerous international exhibitions and combining sculpture with painting and jewellery research.

Among his public works are the large steel sculpture with electromechanical movement in Piazza VI Febbraio in Milan (1987) and the Civica Raccolta dedicated to him in Ragusa (1994), a testament to an uninterrupted bond with his native land.

A self-taught artist, he trained independently by studying contemporary art at close hand, moving from an initial Neorealism to abstract research.

He approached the Roman School and Gruppo 1 with artists such as Dorazio and Turcato and, from the 1970s, turned to sculpture in steel and iron, materials with which he created his “Costruttivi Trasformabili”: large modular structures designed to interact with space and light.

Among his monumental works, L’Albero in the open-air park in Ozieri (2001) stands out.

He exhibited in international museums, and his sculptures are permanently housed at the GNAM in Rome, the Contemporary Art Museum in Genoa, the Museum of the Ruhr and the University of Bochum.

From the 1960s he was also interested in jewellery, taking part in the main trade fairs in the sector, and combined artistic practice with teaching, eventually becoming president of the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca (2009–2010).

His last work, dating from 2010, is held at the MACA in Frosinone.

A sculptor, painter, ceramist and designer, he was born in Pescara in 1921 into an artistic family and trained at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, starting very young to work in ceramics with his brother Andrea.

From the 1940s he exhibited at the Quadriennale di Roma and the Biennale di Venezia, and by the late 1950s he turned to marble, stone and bronze sculptures marked by surreal suggestions, archetypal forms and smoothed volumes, in an ideal dialogue with Brâncuși and Lipchitz.

Among his most important works is the Monument of Auschwitz (1967), followed by numerous monumental and urban projects such as the monument to Mazzini in Milan, the Arco della Pace in Tel Aviv, the Monumento alla Resistenza in Massa Carrara, Campo del Sole in Tuoro sul Trasimeno and various fountains and public installations in the 1980s and 1990s.

From the 1980s he also devoted himself to jewellery design, creating highly original pieces. He died in Pietrasanta in 2008, after receiving in 2006 the medal for Benemeriti della Cultura e dell’Arte.

A Florentine fashion designer born in 1940, founder of the eponymous fashion house, he studied at the Istituto Statale d’Arte in Florence, specialising in textile applications of painting.In the early 1970s he patented an innovative printing process on leather and introduced patchworks of materials and colours, attracting the interest of maisons such as Hermès and Pierre Cardin.He debuted at the Salon du Prêt-à-Porter in Paris (1970) and in the Sala Bianca of Palazzo Pitti (1972), establishing a language made of printed denim, leather inlays, brocades and iconic animal prints. With the 1994 show in Milan he outlined the figure of the “Cavalli woman”, sensual and spectacular, and in the 2000s expanded the brand with popular collaborations such as the capsule for H&M (2007), international flagship stores, exclusive venues such as the Cavalli Club in Dubai and lifestyle projects like the Cavalli Selection wine line.In 2013 he received an honorary degree in Fashion Management from Domus Academy in Milan.

An Italian fashion designer born in Milan in 1948, she is known as the “queen of ethno-chic” for her use of fabrics made with agro-food fibres, in which cotton and silk are interwoven with tamarind, mangosteen or avocado fibres.

After language high school she completed her training by travelling through Rajasthan, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Ghana, Russia and Persia in search of rare fabrics and new inspiration, while keeping production entirely made in Italy.

Her hand-painted silks embroidered with silver become dreamlike material in the collections with which she debuted in Milan in 1997 and in the 1999 show at the Casa della Cultura.

Her garments, made from ancient and rare hand-worked fabrics, together with her accessories and jewellery, animate the showroom in Via Manzoni, a reference point for the worlds of entertainment and culture, where she has dressed, among others, Marta Marzotto, Inge Feltrinelli, Ornella Vanoni and Micheline Connery.

An Italian sculptor and set designer born in Castel Frentano (Chieti) in 1938, he is known for having “abolished” full round sculpture and for introducing the recurring figure of the silhouette. He favours wood, with which he cuts stylised human figures, often in series and in sequence, and frequently returns to Leonardo references, particularly the Vitruvian Man, reinterpreted in works installed at Fiumicino Airport and in Vinci.

Author also of the large winged horse statue at the entrance to the Rai studios in Saxa Rubra, Rome, he has created sets for theatre, cinema and television.

Winner in 1958 of the prize for young Italian sculpture, he is considered a forerunner of Arte Povera for his use of “humble” materials and, in the 1960s, he engaged with the Pop Art of Louise Nevelson and Joe Tilson; emblematic in this sense is Casa Sistina, awarded at the 1966 Biennale di Venezia. In 2007 a major exhibition at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome retraced the main stages of his research.

He was a counter-current designer and fashion stylist, known for a radical exploration of materials and treatments.

With his brother Lamberto, in the Pam Pam boutiques in Riccione and Milan, he transformed leftover fabrics and upholstery textiles into unique, non-repeatable garments, anticipating ideas of unisex fashion, limited editions and exclusivity.

He introduced embroidered shirts, dévoré techniques, asymmetric micro- and macro-pattern placements, the use of Velcro instead of buttons and technical fabrics borrowed from worlds far from fashion (mattress ticking, jacquard table linens, nautical canvas). From the 1980s he signed collections under his own name, extending his experimentation to leather goods, accessories and jewellery, establishing himself as one of the freest and most curious innovators of Made in Italy.

A Milanese painter (1935–2004), registered as Edoarda Maino, she was one of the protagonists of the artistic avant-gardes of the 1950s and 1960s.

Self-taught, she found a turning point in her encounter with Lucio Fontana’s Concetto spaziale and soon began to participate in prizes and group exhibitions, such as the “Cesare da Sesto” in 1956.

In the 1960s she created the Plastiche semitrasparenti and contributed to the birth of the international movement Nouvelle Tendance together with Alviani, Munari and Soto; in the 1970s she explored optical and geometric-perceptive research, then focused on colour, acrylic shades and chromo-reliefs.

She also experimented in jewellery, designing gold and enamel brooches with unmistakable vibrations of light and colour. In 1980 she exhibited with a personal room at the Biennale di Venezia (Padiglione Italia) and, between the 1980s and 2000s, took part in numerous national and international exhibitions, from Milan to Mantua, from the Guggenheim in New York to Zurich and Ferrara.

An eclectic architect and designer (Potenza 1931 – Naples 2022), he chose Naples as his adopted city, where he graduated, taught and worked, moving with ease between architecture, design, sculpture and jewellery. From the organic rationalism of the 1960s he moved towards a more inventive vision of space, becoming one of the leading figures in urban design; emblematic in this sense is the Napolino project, selected in 1998 by the European Community as one of eight pilot projects to be adopted and promoted worldwide.

His collaboration with Alessi for the “napoletana” coffee maker is famous and established him as a creator of ironic, playful objects, often made with poor materials such as iron, copper and brass and populated by light, visionary figures (musicians, kings, sphinxes, Madonnas).

His works are held in international museums and have earned him, among others, two Compasso d’Oro awards (1981, 2014), confirming him as a charismatic figure in art, architecture and design.

An Italian designer and creative director based in Milan. He first trained in architecture in Naples, then moved into fashion in the ateliers of Lancetti and Gattinoni in Rome. After this important experience in haute couture he moved to Milan, where he became art director of Marino alla Scala by Trussardi (1997–’99) and also worked at Max Mara.

In 2001 he showed his first prêt-à-porter line, where his architectural training emerged in the mathematical measurements, geometric rigour, passion for structures, 16-gram weight blouses and 16-metre hems and trains.

From 2002 to 2004 he designed the men’s line Hilton by Vestimenta, with the aim of modernising and characterising brand and products in a creative, coherent way.

From 2005 to 2007 he was creative director of Roberta di Camerino, and in subsequent years he worked with Trussardi and Fendi Sport. He is currently creative director of the Chinese luxury brand MYTENO.

An Italian fashion designer, after his studies he began working for the Marzotto group while also collaborating with other important brands such as Maska, Byblos, Gilmar, Les Copains, Iceberg and Genny.

In this period Dell’Acqua specialised in knitwear under the guidance of stylist Pietro Pianforini, eventually becoming head designer of the brand. In 1995 he founded his own label and debuted with his first women’s collection, “Punk on a Mediterranean Woman”, presented in Milan in 1996; the first men’s collection was shown in 1998 at Palazzo Pitti in Florence. In December 2002 Alessandro Dell’Acqua was appointed art director of the lingerie company La Perla, for which he created the first apparel line presented in 2003.

He has also been the main designer for Redwall and Borbonese.

In 2003 he opened his first showroom in the United States on Madison Avenue, and in 2004 the first London boutique of the brand opened.

In 2010 he returned to the Milan catwalks with the N° 21 collection. He continues to work successfully and to sign his own lines, and his brand is known worldwide.

​​An artist and designer based in Italy, his obsessive, experimental approach is characterised by an attraction to error and chance as privileged references for creative invention.

He has been collaborating with Alessi since 1992, with the cake stand and the laughing creatures of Mattia (timer-clock, stoppers and jars), but his creativity certainly does not stop there: he designs commercial spaces (shops, showrooms), gadgets and extravagant, playful objects for Henry Wintermans.

He held his first solo exhibition in Liverpool, England.

The Italian haute couture house founded by Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana was born from their meeting in a Milanese company, where Gabbana introduced Dolce to the work in a maison and to the creative process.

In 1985 they presented their first collection at Milan Fashion Week, entitled “Real Women” because it was modelled by friends rather than professional models; in 1986 they opened their first shop and then launched new lines in knitwear, swimwear, lingerie and menswear, followed by the second line D&G dedicated to younger customers. Thanks to a dense network of commercial agreements and a highly recognisable, sensual and strongly identity-focused style, Dolce & Gabbana became one of the emblematic brands of the 2000s and of Made in Italy.

In jewellery too the brand displays great flair and theatricality, with rings shaped like letters of the alphabet, metal brooches with crowns and hard stones and many other pieces with a bold character.

He was one of the leading figures of Italian abstraction after World War II. After his early experience with Gruppo Arte Sociale, in 1947 he co-wrote the manifesto and organised the “Forma 1” exhibitions together with Consagra, Turcato, Accardi and Sanfilippo, placing himself at the centre of the neo-avant-garde.

Between the late 1940s and the 1970s he lived and worked in Paris, Prague, Harvard and Berlin, eventually directing the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania.

Following in the footsteps of historic abstractionists such as Kandinsky, Mondrian and Klee, he developed a rigorous research on the dynamism of colour, light and sign, presented in solo exhibitions at the Biennale di Venezia and in international museums and galleries.

Later settling in Todi, he combined studio work with public projects – such as the cycle of mosaics for the Rome underground – and received numerous awards that sealed his status as a master of abstraction.

He was one of the most lucid Italian intellectuals of the twentieth century: art critic, painter, philosopher and academic. A graduate in medicine with a specialisation in psychiatry, over the years he became a professor of aesthetics and one of the protagonists of the debate on contemporary art.

In 1948 he founded the Movimento per l’Arte Concreta (MAC), took part in the ESPACE group and in 1956 contributed to the creation of the Associazione per il Disegno Industriale, pairing intense critical activity with an original and prolific pictorial output.

Interested both in the cognitive and intellectual dimension of art and in its material, pragmatic aspect, he continued to exhibit and publish into very old age – emblematic is the exhibition Vitriol at the Triennale di Milano in 2017 – receiving numerous international awards, academic honours and honorary degrees, and writing until the end for the Corriere della Sera.

A fashion house founded in Milan in 1968 by Gimmo Etro, initially as a textile company, it quickly stood out for the quality of its products and the great refinement of its prints. In 1981 Gerolamo Etro (1940–2015) introduced the Paisley motif, explored in all its forms and colour variations, which over time became the maison’s distinctive element, together with its logo: a proud Pegasus, often printed or embroidered on outerwear, bags, belts and shirts.The Homewear collection debuted in 1985. In 1991 the fashion house launched its womenswear collection and in 1996, during Milan Fashion Week, held its first Etro fashion show; the menswear collections were presented in 2003.The company also holds the Archive of Paisley Textile Art and an evocative corporate library, with ancient fabrics and historical garments.In jewellery it creates bright, elegant bijoux: brooches enriched with details, necklaces, earrings and chokers in gold and silver, hard-stone pieces and leather bracelets that leave a distinctive, iconic mark.

Born in Fano in 1947, he is a goldsmith, sculptor and medallist and one of the leading exponents of the Scuola di Fano. He learned goldsmith techniques at the age of ten from his jeweller uncle and later taught ornamental sculpture at the Accademia di Brera, living between Milan and Pesaro.

After his early solo exhibitions in Rome (1969) and Paris, from the 1980s he also exhibited in Australia and Buenos Aires and took part in important shows such as the exhibition Arte del Gioiello d’Artista dal 1900 ad oggi at Palazzo Pitti, in Florence (2001).

Solo exhibitions in Sassoferrato, Spoleto, Urbino and Brussels confirmed the centrality of a visionary research in which jewellery becomes micro-sculpture and gold enters into dialogue with twentieth-century languages, from informal art to surrealism and constructivism.

An Italian luxury fashion house founded in 1925 by Edoardo Fendi and Adele Casagrande, it began as a fur workshop which, after their marriage, became the first Fendi boutique.

The first maison to offer prêt-à-porter fur collections, it underwent a decisive turning point in 1966 with the arrival of Karl Lagerfeld, who created the famous double F logo and designed the first haute couture collection; clothing followed in 1977.

In 1997 Lagerfeld, together with Silvia Fendi, designed the iconic Baguette bag, destined to become the symbol of the brand. In the 2000s the maison linked its name to major cultural projects such as the restoration of the Trevi Fountain with “Fendi for Fountains” and spectacular fashion shows in Rome.

In jewellery we find the same unmistakable elegance: fashionable, wearable pieces – crocodile leather bracelets, gold rings bearing the Fendi signature, baguette bracelets and gold, silver and metal earrings – that extend the fashion house’s language into the world of jewellery.

One of the most important and innovative Italian designers and entrepreneurs, founder of the eponymous fashion house. He took his first steps in the United States, where in 1923 he began working in a shoe shop, becoming a celebrated shoemaker.

In 1927 he returned to Italy, moving to Florence where he opened his first women’s shoe shop, initially destined only for the American market. In the 1950s Palazzo Spini Feroni (where Ferragamo had established his first shop) became a destination for film actresses and royal families, which helped the name of the shoe company grow internationally.

After the entrepreneur’s death, the brand’s fame did not wane but continued to grow thanks to his wife Wanda.

Today the Ferragamo brand has diversified its production from leather goods to clothing, accessories and jewellery design.

Men’s jewellery is perfect for both casual and formal looks, while women’s pieces are precious and delicate, unique and refined.

He was an Italian fashion designer, one of the leading figures of Made in Italy and founder of Gianfranco Ferré Spa in 1978, known as “the architect of fashion” for his training and design approach.

In the 1970s he began working as a costume jewellery and accessories designer with Walter Albini. In 1978 the first Gianfranco Ferré women’s collection was presented, and in 1982 he debuted with his first menswear collection. In 1989 he became artistic director of the French house Christian Dior, where he remained until 1996.

In 2000 the first children’s clothing line under the Ferré name was launched.

He received many prestigious awards during his career: six times the Occhio d’Oro for best women’s collection, the Gold Medal of the city of Milan, the Dé d’Or in Paris for his first Dior haute couture collection.

In 2018, eleven years after his death, the exhibition “I gioielli di Gianfranco Ferré” opened at Palazzo Madama in Turin: 200 pieces retracing the designer’s work from 1980 to 2007 centred on jewellery – necklaces, brooches, belts, rings, bracelets and earrings made from the most diverse materials: enamels, stones, painted wood, Murano glass and Swarovski crystals, leather and copper.

The daughter of a dressmaker – a background that likely sparked her love of fabrics and fashion – she is an Italian fashion designer: in 1974 she designed her first collection and in 1980 founded the company Aeffe with her brother Massimo. In 1981 she opened her showroom in Milan, and two years later her creations debuted on the Milan catwalks.

From then on she began collaborations with established designers: first Franco Moschino, then Jean-Paul Gaultier.

In 1991 she was named best female entrepreneur. In 1996 she entered the United States market: Aeffe USA was founded with the opening of a showroom on 56th Street in New York, and in 1997 she signed another collaboration agreement with Narciso Rodriguez.

Over the course of her long career Ferretti has played a significant role in promoting Italian culture and has received numerous awards, such as the title of “Cavaliere del Lavoro” from the President of the Italian Republic in 1998 and the “Lifetime Achievement Award” in Rome in 2005.

He was a multifaceted artist who worked in painting, printmaking, writing, ceramics and sculpture. Very young, he moved to Urbino thanks to a scholarship to the Regio Istituto per l’Illustrazione del Libro, where he deepened his knowledge of printmaking techniques – lithography, serigraphy, etching, woodcut – building a solid craft foundation.

After his experience in Milan and the period at Olivetti in Ivrea as art director of a cultural magazine, he settled in Canzo, in a large nineteenth-century spinning mill that he transformed into a studio and later into his home, today the seat of the Foundation dedicated to him.

From his early participation in the Biennale di Venezia and exhibitions at MoMA in New York, he achieved great success with cycles such as the “Statue” and “Isole di Statue”, rich in explicit references to the Renaissance, also evident in the “Storie Perugine” commissioned by the Buitoni family. His works are now housed in major museums including the Musei Vaticani, the Hermitage, MoMA, the Pushkin Museum and the GAM in Milan.

Writer, set designer, playwright, painter, actor and theatre director. After graduating from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera he began working at Rai as a writer of satirical texts. Among his roughly seventy works – comedies, farces, musical shows and monologues – his most famous are Mistero Buffo (1969) and Morte accidentale di un anarchico (1970).

A complete artist, he created numerous paintings, now conserved at the Fondazione Fo Rame: in his painting too he criticised the world around him with an ironic, biting tone, using joyful, contrasting and strident colours, always full of life.

Dario Fo won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1997. In 2005 he received an honorary degree from the Sorbonne in Paris, and the following year, in 2006, the same honour from La Sapienza University in Rome. On 24 March 2012, his 86th birthday, he opened the exhibition “Lazzi Sberleffi Dipinti” at Palazzo Reale in Milan, with more than 400 works spanning his entire life.

Trained at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, she is an artist who, from an initial interest in painting and ceramics, moved on to sculpture and jewellery, creating pieces and small sculptures in which she combined gold, silver, bronze, steel and plexiglass, introducing a highly experimental jewellery language.

From the 1970s she lived in Milan, where she exhibited at the gallery “Il Sestante”, entered into dialogue with Ettore Sottsass and began a long collaboration with Bruno Munari. In the 1980s she used photography to investigate forms and decorative motifs, transforming them into modular geometric compositions and light effects; she took part in the constructivist movement and then in the “Gruppo Internazionale Madì”. Present at exhibitions such as the 14th Triennale di Milano and Forme nel Verde, she saw two of her works enter the collection of the Regione Toscana in 2003. She later retired to Chiari, in the province of Brescia.

She was a great Italian fashion designer. She studied dress design in London; at the end of the 1920s, during a stay in Paris, she met Coco Chanel, who convinced her to collaborate in her atelier. In 1930, back in Italy, she began working as style director for Sartoria Ventura. In 1946 she opened her first haute couture atelier in Rome.

Her success was largely due to her clientele – mainly American actresses – thanks to whom she became known; in 1956 she designed the costumes for King Vidor’s film War and Peace. In 1960 Fernanda Gattinoni created a collection of empire-style dresses, full skirts and bodices that became her signature style.

In the 1980s the atelier grew thanks to the creations of Fernanda’s son, Raniero Gattinoni, who gave the company a new direction, taking the first steps towards internationalising the brand.

The maison’s jewellery ranges from precious pieces to bijoux: necklaces, earrings, rigid bracelets, pendants and adjustable rings in the colours of the Teodosia collection. Simple lines add elegance both to the jewels and to those who wear them.

In 2002 the archive of Gattinoni Due was declared by the Soprintendenza Archivistica del Lazio to be “of particularly important historical interest”.

After studying architecture, driven by a strong interest in fashion and clothing, in 1979 he began working at the Dimitri atelier in New York to learn the secrets of tailoring.

In 1983 he created his first collection for Zamasport.

At a time when fashion largely followed architectural, aggressive silhouettes with big, armour-like shoulders, Gigli went against the grain with intimate, delicate figures and a poetic, minimalist idea of femininity.

His later shows reflected eras and ethnicities, landscapes and poems, filtered through his complex, romantic personality: his capes inspired by Venetian glass are famous. His credo is lightness, and his fabrics are worked in three dimensions.

The Romeo Gigli brand still exists today, although the designer retired in 2004. In 2008 the label changed hands and became part of the Excentric Group, which entrusted its evolution to designer Alessandro De Benedetti. In 2020 De Benedetti presented the women’s spring-summer collection to great acclaim.

He was an Italian graphic designer and artist. A graduate in architecture from the Politecnico di Torino, from a young age he was interested in art, advertising graphics and photography, moving within the circle of Second Futurism and later evolving towards Geometric Abstraction and Constructivism.

His professional interests were twofold: advertising and art. He was especially successful in graphics, with advertising commissions from Italy and abroad, culminating in the creation of the iconic “Pure New Wool” logo in 1964. In this period he received numerous national and international awards. He later designed a series of covers for a science fiction novel series published by Penguin Books in 1969–70.

From the 1970s he abandoned graphics and devoted himself exclusively to art. His intense exhibition activity culminated in his participation in the Biennale di Venezia in 1972, where he designed the section on experimental graphics. Grignani took part in numerous private and public exhibitions worldwide.

His works are held in some of the most important international and national museums, such as MoMA in New York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London’s South Kensington and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.

He specialised in Milan in the techniques of chasing and repoussé. He is considered one of the protagonists of the renewal of Italian art in the second half of the twentieth century, an expert in sculpture, painting, the art of chasing and medal-making.

He worked in several European countries, especially in Berlin and Breslau, Vienna and Paris. In the French capital his relationship with Cubist and abstract movements was particularly important.

In 1947 he presented his first solo exhibition of chased metal reliefs in Milan. In 1948 he took part in a group exhibition with Burri, Dorazio, Mannucci and others. His chosen materials were copper, silver, pewter and lead, but bronze casting lay at the core of his search for essential plastic structure. In the 1950s he created his first “abstract medals”, which he called “classic impressions”.

He later worked stone, finally devoting himself entirely to sculpture: marble, basalt and volcanic stone were used to create imposing sculptures through the superimposition of chiselled blocks. In painting he was known for his polychrome gouaches.

His works are present in various museums and collections in Italy and abroad, including Antwerp, Munich, Paris, São Paulo, Tokyo. He received important national and international awards and honours and took part in the Biennale di Venezia in 1952, 1954, 1962 and 1968, the latter with a main room.

An eccentric French fashion designer and founder of the eponymous fashion house. He always wanted to work in the world of haute couture, inspired by fashion icons such as Yves Saint Laurent, Kenzo and Diane von Fürstenberg. He trained in the most famous fashion boutiques between New York and Paris. In 1989 he settled permanently in Milan.

In 1998 he designed several collections for Pucci and later, in 2003, created an oversized womenswear collection for Marzotto.

In 2008 he was designer for Jeckerson, where he increased the women’s line by 25%. His fashion shows always have the flavour of an impromptu, imaginative, society happening.

He creates garments outside what is strictly trendy, reworking seasonal themes in an absolutely original and sometimes even counter-current way.

Since 2021 his jewellery and accessories have been sold on the Farfetch app.

Mariuccia Mandelli, known as Krizia, a name borrowed from one of Plato’s dialogues.

She began her business in 1954 in a workshop where she worked with her partner Flora Dolci and several employees.

Her quest for stylistic innovation started with skirts, which she would pack in suitcases and take around Italy to promote in the shops she felt were most in tune with her vision.

In 1964 Krizia staged her first solo show in the prestigious setting of Palazzo Pitti, winning the “Critica della Moda” prize, previously awarded only to Emilio Pucci. True to a spirit of contradiction, in 1971, when only maxi and midi lengths were in fashion, her very short shorts earned her the “Tiberio d’Oro” prize in Capri.

In 1995 the retrospective “Krizia. Una storia” was presented at the Triennale Milano to celebrate the designer’s forty years of work. From 2000 onwards she collaborated with young talents on the design of collections. Among the most prominent were Alber Elbaz, Jean Paul-Knott, Hamish Morrow, Giambattista Valli and Gianluca Capannolo. In those same years the first Krizia accessories were produced, including shoes, bags, belts and jewellery, brooches in various materials from copper to plexiglass. In 2012 the Italian designer relaunched the fragrances K and Krizia Uomo.

An architect, designer and Italian artist, he graduated in architecture in Milan, where he lives and works. Alongside his teaching activity he has built a career as an unconventional, sometimes uncomfortable artist who is difficult to classify.

Over the course of his research he has joined and founded various movements, from Global Tools to the Gruppo Design Radicale, of which he is one of the most original voices. He has traversed different artistic currents: from sign art to conceptual art, environmental art, narrative art and artist’s cinema, which he championed and which earned him numerous international awards and recognition. Among his many solo shows are his invitation to the Biennale di Venezia in 1970, participation in the Triennale Milano (1972) and presence at the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Lyon (1991).

From 1998 to 2000 he curated the exhibitions “Le diversità” at the Fortezza da Basso in Florence. In 2014 the Triennale Design Museum organised a major monographic exhibition, “Ugo La Pietra. Progetto disequilibrante”; he took part in Artissima in Turin with Galleria Camera 16 with a solo show in the “Back to the Future” section. In 2016 he won the ADI Compasso d’Oro Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2020 he created several solo exhibitions, including “Storie di virus” at Galleria Corraini in Mantua, with drawings on the theme of the Covid-19 pandemic, and “Ex voto” at Galleria Nuages in Milan, with a series of illustrations on devotional ex-voto objects.

He was one of the most important Italian fashion designers from the 1960s onwards. In 1954 he opened his first atelier in Via Margutta in Rome.

His haute couture debut came in 1961 with his first fashion show at Palazzo Pitti. He later launched his famous military–inspired collection, which marked his success.

Attentive to the social role of women, his international breakthrough came at the end of the 1960s when he presented dresses made from printed fabrics inspired by the works of great masters of modern art: Chagall, Kandinsky, Klimt, Matisse, Modigliani, Picasso. This earned him the nickname “painter tailor”.

In 1999 he decided to retire and in 2000, at the Chiostro del Bramante in Rome, he presented his last collection.

He is an Italian sculptor and engraver who, after studying at the Istituto d’Arte in the capital – where he would later teach – also taught at the French Academy. The teachings of Afro and Pericle Fazzini were fundamental in his training; from them he inherited attention to line and matter, favouring metal over other precious materials.

From the late 1960s he exhibited abstract, geometric sculptures in sheet iron and later stainless steel, characterised by rigorous rational control yet permeated by poetic imagination and subtle irony.

His research, influenced by conceptual and informal art, by Brâncuși and Constructivism, also extends to graphics and drawing.

A protagonist of numerous solo and group exhibitions in Italy and abroad (Venice, Rome, Krakow, Frankfurt, São Paulo, Alexandria, Osaka, New Delhi), he received important recognition such as the Premio Feltrinelli for Sculpture (1988), the title of academician of San Luca (2000) and the President of the Republic’s Prize for sculpture (2004).

An Italian fashion designer, costume designer and artist, he created his first collection in 1987, and in March 1999 presented his first prêt-à-porter in Milan.

He is known for his experimentation and his ability to “feel” the different realities that surround him, bringing together art, music, dance, theatre and cinema.

In 2003 Antonio Marras became artistic director of Kenzo, and the following year the first collection for the maison was presented in Paris. He was the first fashion designer to be hosted by the prestigious Kenzo Foundation for contemporary art in Venice. In 2009 he designed the costumes for Luca Ronconi’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

In September 2015 he signed the exhibition design for “Sguardo di donna” at the Casa dei Tre Oci in Venice. From 22 October 2016 to 21 January 2017 the exhibition “Antonio Marras: Nulla dies sine linea” was held at the Triennale Milano.

He was a sculptor, goldsmith, painter and man of peace, a central figure in the recognition of contemporary jewellery as an art form.

A partisan during the Resistance and a chemistry graduate, he came to sculpture through studies at the Accademie di Belle Arti in Rome and Florence, experimenting with different materials – iron, gold, stone, wood, enamels, watercolours – and later teaching at the Accademia Albertina in Turin.

From the 1960s he exhibited in international contexts (Turin, London, Munich, New York, Tokyo, Biennale di Venezia), while often choosing the quiet of Pietrasanta as his place of work.

His gold sculptures, inspired by Greek myths and Judaeo-Christian tradition, gave rise to works such as Narciso, Metamorfosi, Il Dio felice, while his jewellery – lips, fingers, hands and body fragments – are true artistic statements, dense with light and sensuality.

Through his search for a timeless beauty founded on truth, measure and expressive strength, he contributed decisively to the entry of jewellery into museums and major international collections.

She is the last heir of the La Perla brand, which grew from a small home-based craft business into a major luxury lingerie and beachwear brand. The Masotti family created jewellery born from the dialogue between intimacy and appearance, giving life – as in a magnificent obsession – to that sense of uniqueness that distinguished the family’s creations.

In 2001 Anna Masotti debuted with her first women’s clothing line at Milano Moda Donna. In recent years she has been involved in the projects of the non-profit foundation Fashion Research Italy (FRI), whose aim is to promote the manufacturing excellence of the Italian territory and which has become a reference point for the entire fashion sector. The foundation’s goal is to preserve the tradition of Made in Italy and support companies in their digital and green transition, also through targeted training programmes.

He was a multifaceted Italian artist: provocateur, performance creator and conceptual artist. In 1961 he presented his first exhibition, a group show dedicated to young artists at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, where he won first prize for sculpture with Uomo meccanico. In 1968 at Galleria L’Attico in Rome he exhibited works made from everyday objects or manipulated industrial materials, which elicited unusual tactile experiences in viewers. The same dynamic appears in Tensione con pietra, shown at “Prospekt 69” in Düsseldorf, and in Contrasti di peso and Calamita e trucioli, presented by Alexandre Iolas in Paris in 1969, where the viewer is involved in the creative process.

In 1976 Mattiacci won the Bolaffi prize. In June 1984 at the Kunstforum in Munich he created the installation Alta tensione. In 1988 he was invited with a personal room to the Biennale di Venezia and shortly afterwards inaugurated the Centro per la Scultura Contemporanea Torre Martignana in Cagli.

Many of his works in Italy and abroad are installed in open spaces, such as the two for the Capodimonte Museum in Naples (1991), the large Le vie del cielo in the bed of the river Bidente (Forlì), La mia idea del cosmo at the Mercati Traianei (2001), Occhio del cielo in Los Angeles (2005), Grande disco con segni astrali (2006) in Cagli. In 2018 a retrospective titled Gong was dedicated to Mattiacci at Forte Belvedere in Florence.

Registered as Gaetano Mattiolo, he is an Italian fashion designer. At nineteen he opened his first boutique, known for its use of precious materials and elaborately crafted buttons in fine materials, often as micro-sculptures.

He was the first designer to dress a Pope, creating four chasubles for John Paul II, now housed in the Vatican. In 2000 he invented the style – and the neologism – prêt-à-couture, a synthesis between the luxury of haute couture and artisanal-industrial production.

Endowed with great artistic flair, his unconventional style is characterised by colour and opulence, as well as by particular attention to detail. He was the designer of Raffaella Carrà, Valeria Marini and Ivana Trump.

An Italian architect, designer and artist, he graduated in architecture from the Politecnico di Milano in 1959 and, from the late 1970s, was among the renewers of Italian design.

His eclectic personality led him to cross from design into painting and publishing. He directed the magazines Casabella, Modo and Domus. He created objects, furniture, interiors, paintings and installations.

He collaborated with international companies such as Alessi, Philips, Swatch, Cartier and Hermès, and was a communication consultant for many Far Eastern industries. His famous “Proust armchair”, created in 1993, is exhibited at the Triennale Design Museum and the Arts Museum in Catanzaro.

He received numerous international awards, including the Compasso d’Oro in 1971, 1981 and 2014.

He taught design at a prestigious school in Vienna. Many of his works are held in museums and private collections in Italy and abroad. Among his most important projects, realised with his brother Francesco for Atelier Mendini, are the Alessi factories in Omegna, the new Olympic swimming pool in Trieste, the Groningen Museum in the Netherlands, several underground stations, the restoration of the Villa Comunale in Naples, a tower in Hiroshima in Japan, a district in Lugano in Switzerland and other infrastructures in the Americas.

Fashion designer and founder of the Missoni fashion house together with his wife Rosita Jelmini, before embarking on his artistic career he was an Italian sprinter and took part in the 1948 Olympics.

In 1958 the first collection was presented in Milan under the name “Milano-Sympathy”. In April 1967 Missoni’s popularity grew further with the presentation of a new collection at Palazzo Pitti.

In 2003 Missoni celebrated the maison’s 50th anniversary with a fashion show featuring more than 100 models from the historical archive.

The fashion house developed a concept of artistic knitwear, giving wide space to textures and colours: among its iconic creations is the long wool dress, which gave life to a new haute bohemian fashion. Innovative and celebrated was the introduction of the zigzag motif in its knitwear.

Ottavio Missoni died at the age of 92 and was until then mayor of the “free municipality of Zara in exile”. Among Missoni jewellery and accessories, the celebrated letter necklaces deserve particular attention.

A revolutionary designer and creative who marked the 1980s with the Moschino brand, which he founded in 1983. His early creations focused on casual fashion and jeans, but soon his line extended to lingerie, evening wear, shoes, menswear and perfumes. In 1988 he launched an “economic” line, Cheap & Chic Donna and Cheap & Chic Uomo.

Only in 1993 did the designer stage an exhibition of his paintings, within the retrospective “X Anni di Kaos”.

Moschino reworked classic garments by adding irreverent details, such as suits with pinwheels instead of buttons, the famous little black dress with its price embroidered on the fabric, or skirts made entirely from ties, one-sleeved shirts or T-shirts bearing the word “Moschifo”. His catwalks were also distinctive for their originality, with models walking on their knees, him posing dressed as a woman, and with his famous show invitations printed on underwear.

Moschino jewellery is aimed at original personalities who can wear leather bracelets and design earrings.

He was one of the most original protagonists of twentieth-century Italian art, graphics and design. An eclectic artist, he devoted his creative work to experimentation in all its forms, ranging across painting, sculpture, writing, design, photography and teaching.

Immersed from the outset in the great avant-gardes of the twentieth century through his adhesion to Second Futurism, he was attracted by artistic figures such as André Breton and Louis Aragon, whom he met and frequented in Paris and who influenced him in the creation of his “useless machines”.

In 1948 he founded MAC (Movimento di Arte Concreta), deepening his research on objects and things as a process of vision, as a mode of fruition aimed at satisfaction of the product in an industrial but also aesthetic sense.

In the 1950s he began to express the guidelines of his thought and art with works such as the “Negativi-positivi”, the “Giocattoli d’artista”, the “Forchette parlanti”, “I Fossili” and the “Fontana e giochi d’acqua” (Biennale 1954). His attention was particularly focused on the world of children. With and for children he created numerous works, such as the first workshop for young people at the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan. For them he also wrote many surprising, original books that captured their attention in new and modern ways.

His artistic path was rich in variations: painting, sculpture, graphics, publishing, photography, cinema, anticipating video art. He left more than 600 works.

An eclectic, versatile artist, he explored and experimented with many artistic fields: painting, interior architecture, design and jewellery. After attending the Accademie di Belle Arti in Rome and Florence, he went abroad; decisive for his training was his stay in Stockholm, where he worked as a designer in Lenmart Tham’s studio. There he collaborated with architect Marenco and created the exterior decoration for the Lansparbanken bank; he was also commissioned to create illustrations for the daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.

After his Swedish experience, Onali devoted himself to interior design for villas and hotels and designed a monument in Saudi Arabia. He applied his design skills to the creation of furniture for major Italian and foreign companies.

His search for the new also led him to work as a set designer (creating sets for some of Renzo Arbore’s shows on Rai 1), graphic designer and cartoonist. He exhibited his work in Bologna, Lugano, Stockholm, Rome, New York, Tokyo, Las Vegas and Buenos Aires.

He is an artist, painter, sculptor and one of the leading exponents of Arte Povera internationally. After his beginnings in the 1950s, he reached a decisive turning point with the “Quadri specchianti” (1961–62), works that introduced a “retrovisive” perspective in which the viewer and real time physically enter the image. Between 1965 and 1966 he created the “Oggetti in meno”, considered foundational for Arte Povera, and in 1967 he produced the famous Venere degli stracci.

In the 1970s he deepened the theme of the mirror with actions and works such as Divisione e moltiplicazione dello specchio, while from 1994, with the manifesto Progetto Arte, he explicitly placed art at the centre of a “responsible social transformation”.

He has been a key figure at the Biennale di Venezia and Documenta Kassel, has received the Leone d’Oro for lifetime achievement (2003) and the Wolf Prize (2007), and his works are housed in major museums worldwide.

With Cittadellarte–Fondazione Pistoletto he created in Biella a centre dedicated to art in dialogue with society, where exhibitions, meetings and workshops put his ethical and aesthetic vision into practice.

He is one of the most important Italian contemporary sculptors and goldsmiths, and older brother of Giò Pomodoro. After studying architecture in Milan he began as a draftsman, decorator and metal craftsman, creating jewellery and small abstract sculptures in gold and silver, often inspired by masters such as Paul Klee and Constantin Brâncuși.

He later turned to sculpture proper, using iron, tin, lead, cement and bronze, and developed a vocabulary of geometric forms – spheres, cones, cylinders, cubes, pyramids, continuous columns and discs – which, starting from refined microstructures, achieved strong monumentality. His famous “Sfere”, now a recognisable symbol worldwide, punctuate key places such as the Farnesina in Rome, the Cortile del Belvedere in the Vatican, Pesaro, New York, the Duomo di Cefalù and various public spaces in Italy.

Through monuments, major commissions, exhibitions and publications, his research has contributed decisively to redefining the relationship between sculpture, urban space and collective memory. He lives and works in Milan.

He was a sculptor, goldsmith, engraver and set designer, and is considered one of the most important abstract sculptors of the twentieth century.

From Orciano di Pesaro he moved to Milan where, together with his brother Arnaldo, he began creating jewellery and goldsmith pieces.

He gradually became an expert in bronze reliefs with broad, fluctuating surfaces. In 1955 he oriented his research towards the “rational representation of signs” in his famous Fluidità Contrapposte.

He took part in the Biennale di Venezia in 1956, where he exhibited Argenti fusi su osso di seppia dedicated to the poet Ezra Pound. He then used bronze in the Superfici in Tensione shown in Paris, followed by the Radiali (1965) and the Soli cycle in the 1970s. His works are scattered around the world, from Frankfurt to Malpensa, from Lugano to Tel Aviv. Pomodoro is also represented in private collections such as the Nelson Rockefeller Collection in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City, the Collection of Modern Art of the city of Jeddah, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield, the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Rome and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Milan.

He is a painter, sculptor and jewellery designer. After working at IBM, he opened a gallery space in the historic centre of Rome where, together with his brother Carmine, he discovered the world of sculpture.

Self-taught, he went on to have an extraordinary international career. From 1952 – the year of his first solo show at the Centro d’Arte Caprese by Edwin Cerio – to today, he has held 206 solo exhibitions in Europe, the USA, South America, Africa, the Middle and Far East and has taken part in more than 260 prestigious group exhibitions in Italy and abroad. His works are on permanent display in 54 public spaces and, since 2002, he has had his own museum space, the Fondazione Sinisca, in the medieval tower of Santa Margherita in Spello.

His steel and iron spires are unforgettable.

A British fashion designer with a highly recognisable language thanks to his characteristic striped patterns. He is one of the most famous English fashion creators of his generation, characterised by a dandy, casual style capable of mixing classic English elements with French charm.

At 15 he left school and began working in a large clothing store, attended tailoring classes and started working in Savile Row, in London. In 1970 his future wife Pauline Denyer convinced him to open his first clothing boutique. In 1976 he presented his first menswear collection in Paris under the Paul Smith brand, a debut that prompted him to expand retail with a store in London’s Covent Garden in 1979. In 1993 he created his first womenswear line.

In 2000 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and since 2007 he has been an honorary member of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

He was one of the most important Italian architects, designers and photographers of the twentieth century, a multifaceted figure able to move naturally between design and visual arts. After studying at the Politecnico di Torino he moved to Milan, where he opened his studio and joined the Movimento di Arte Concreta, taking part in early exhibitions on abstraction in Italy.

From 1958 his collaboration with Olivetti marked a turning point: he designed calculators, typewriters and, above all, the Elea 9003 mainframe computer, which received the Compasso d’Oro in 1970. At the same time he continued painting and exploring Spazialismo, worked with ceramics, enamel on copper, glass and jewellery, but it was in furniture design that he found one of his most radical languages, culminating in the Controdesign of the 1960s and iconic pieces such as the “Seggiolina da pranzo”, the “Svincolo” floor lamp and the table “Le strutture tremano”.

His architecture was always conceived around people and the places where they live – as seen in Casa Wolf, Casa Olabuenaga, Casa Cei, Casa Bischofberger – and in 1981 it culminated in the founding of the Memphis group, which revolutionised the aesthetics of contemporary furniture. In his last years, from 2005 to 2007, he focused mainly on criticism and theoretical reflection on design.

A fashion designer and entrepreneur, he took over the family business in 1970, transforming it from a small craft workshop producing gloves into one of the most important Italian fashion houses internationally and helping spread Made in Italy.

He decided to expand production to other luxury accessories and, in 1973, created the iconic greyhound logo. In that same year Trussardi created a mini jewellery capsule collection celebrating and supporting women’s rights; to this day the maison renews its commitment to this collection.

In the early 1980s the designer launched the first collection of leather jackets, which soon expanded into a prêt-à-porter line aimed, from the 1980s onwards, at various customer groups: women, men and children.

In 1988 he designed the uniforms for the Italian athletes at the Seoul Olympic Games in South Korea. Today his name is associated both with a solid, established fashion company and with a Foundation devoted to promoting cultural and artistic projects.

Born in Loro Ciuffenna (Arezzo) in 1918 and deceased in Terranuova Bracciolini – also in the province of Arezzo – in 2002, he was a sculptor and painter who spanned the entire twentieth century.

Trained at the Istituto d’Arte di Porta Romana and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, he debuted in 1945 with a solo exhibition at Galleria La Porta. Between 1947 and 1949 he lived in Milan, where contact with artists such as Birolli and Fontana – who invited him to sign the Manifesto Spazialista – strengthened his inclination towards abstraction.

Winner of the Premio Gariboldi for sculpture (1948), he took part in the 1950 exhibition and in 1953 shared first prize in the competition for the Monument to Pinocchio, a project he was later forced to abandon because of severe depression.

From the 1960s he resumed his work with renewed energy, between retrospectives and participation in international exhibitions, and from the 1970s he created numerous public monuments, such as the mural commemorating the Nazi massacre in Castelnuovo dei Sabbioni (1992). In 1993 the Venturino Venturi Museum opened in Loro Ciuffenna (Arezzo), and since 2004 his home-studio has housed the Archive dedicated to him, a testament to an intense, coherent exploration of sculpture, painting and civic memory.

An architect and designer, he has explored industrial design, exhibition design and interior architecture, living and working for a long time between Florence and Milan. His objects are characterised by a strong iconic charge and often anthropomorphic figures, suspended between dream and reality, with references to comics, science fiction and mythology.

One of the founders of Bolidismo and “King Kong Production” together with Stefano Giovannoni, he has collaborated with companies such as Alessi, Kundalini and BRF, signing, among other things, the Girotondo series and the famous Firebird gas lighter.

Alongside his teaching activity (Architecture in Florence, then Accademia di Brera and Domus Academy in Milan), from 2000 he gradually shifted his focus to painting, realist in approach and concentrated on capturing the energy and beauty of bodies and nature: small domestic animals, cats, chicks and the world of the wild, far from any rhetorical landscape or ecological cliché.

A revolutionary designer and creative, he freed fashion from conformism and helped make Made in Italy recognised and appreciated worldwide. Founder of the eponymous fashion house and of the famous Medusa symbol, he took his first steps in his mother’s atelier, where he began learning the tailoring profession.

On 28 March 1978 he presented his first women’s collection in Milan. In the 1981–1982 season Versace signed the first of a long series of collaborations with Teatro alla Scala in Milan, for which he designed stage costumes.

Versace collections became increasingly provocative and daring: in 1981 he presented futuristic dresses in metal mesh, while in the late 1980s he introduced a bondage-style look that caused a media sensation.

In 1991 the Versace Signature brand was launched and in 1993 the Versace Home Collection, dedicated to interior design.

In April 1995 Time magazine named him Man of the Moment. This marked the beginning of the brand’s neo-punk aesthetic, which still inspires Versace collections today.

He was murdered by a fanatic who shot him at the entrance to his home.

Belonging to the important von Fürstenberg and Agnelli families, he was a fashion designer and designer. He began working in fashion in New York at Macy’s while studying at the Parsons School of Design, designing womenswear collections, particularly for larger sizes.

In the 1970s, still in New York, then the world capital of modernity, he enrolled at FIT Fashion Institute of Technology. Later he expanded his production to prêt-à-porter and fragrances, as well as a haute couture line in Rome.

In the 1980s Egon von Fürstenberg moved to Italy and, while continuing to travel between Italy and the United States, opened his first headquarters in Milan and later his atelier in Rome, where he diversified and expanded his production to include jewellery.

A revolutionary British fashion designer whose rise came in the 1970s, when she helped create punk style with extravagant, provocative designs.

Her first fashion show in London was in March 1981, with the “Pirate” collection. Her models no longer drew inspiration solely from street fashion and youth culture, but also from tradition and tailoring, designing historical costumes. Her research spanned all eras: Westwood was the first contemporary designer to modernise and reintroduce the corset and the faux col, tailoring elements that had seemed buried in a distant past.

In 1991 she won the British Fashion Award as Designer of the Year.

Westwood was always attentive to political and current issues; some of her collections were entitled “Propaganda”, “Active Resistance”, “Active Resistance to Propaganda” and expressed her strong dissent towards politicians. She remained true to herself with her last show in 2020, which not only presented the new collection but also became a protest in defence of Julian Assange, the famous dissident and hacker.

A jewellery artist belonging to the renowned Padua school. He graduated in Padua in History of Contemporary Art with a thesis on the artist’s jewel. He has had an academic career as a university lecturer in Siena, Florence and at the Accademia di Ravenna. Since the 1980s he has been active in Italy and abroad with solo and group exhibitions, and his work is particularly appreciated in Switzerland and Germany.

Zorzi is best known for his so-called “avant-garde” jewels such as the highly distinctive Structura, Scriptura, Modulazione and La Fecondità, a ring referring to the sea and nature with a half-open oyster.

He uses precious metals such as gold, silver and copper, but also steel, quartz, ebony and slate, creating unusual colour combinations. His jewellery thus presents itself as a “cultural object”, becoming a true work of art.

The master goldsmith has exhibited his creations in Milan at the Castello Sforzesco, in Berlin at the Kunstgewerbemuseum and, in 2017, at the exhibition “Il Gioiello italiano del XX secolo” at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan. Abroad he has joined the ranks of the best-known artists exhibiting at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Finally, American audiences have also been able to appreciate his jewellery in Los Angeles, Boston and Montreal in Canada.

He is also involved in silverware, collaborating with well-known brands such as Pampaloni in Florence.