In 1954, he set up TV News stands at the Milan Triennale from which Zenit broadcast images and people could watch informative programmes; a jazz enthusiast, working with the artists Enrico Baj and Sergio Dangelo, he furnished the famous old Santa Tecla Jazz Club with a collage of posters and battered mannequins hanging from the ceiling: this marked the beginning of Joe Colombo’s extraordinary career (1930 - 1971) – who was always on the look out for new technologies and materials on the borderline between art and industry – and unsurprisingly was known as the prophet of design.
The exhibition entitled CARO JOE COLOMBO, CI HAI INSEGNATO IL FUTURO (DEAR JOE COLOMBO, YOU TAUGHT US ABOUT THE FUTURE), curated by Ignazia Favata and organised by Suazes in conjunction with the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan and Joe Colombo archive, is dedicated to him and his irrepressible imagination constantly projected into the future. The exhibition, running from 24th May - 4th September 2022, brings his own story and constant interest in new forms ofprogress to the rooms of GAM Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan.
The exhibition layout beings with his early experiments from the 1950s when he joined the Nuclear Art Movement and made his first design for a Nuclear City that included a residential city and an underground city complete with cars, utilities, warehouses and an underground railway.
The death of his father and the need for him to be involved in the family business led to a radical change in direction as he abandoned the art world and ventured into industry. This turned out to be a crucial experience for Colombo, who learned about construction and production techniques and became familiar with new plastic materials. After a few years, he gave up the business and opened his first firm in Milan.
The 1960s began with him being awarded the IN-ARCH prize for the methacrylate false ceiling in the Continental Hotel at Platamona in Sardinia (1964). He then designed his first Acrilica lamp for O-Luce with his brother Gianni and won a gold medal at the 13th Milan Triennale (1964).
His talent for abstraction that emerged during his early years and the more concrete approach he developed working in business led him to create design objects in new shapes using new materials, proposing innovative ideas for how life would be lived in the future.
His love of mechanics, his sense of freedom from the constraints of special architectural contexts that he envisaged on a much smaller and more transformable scale, together with his studies into ergonomics and psychology, resulted in him designing such radically innovative projects as the Programmable System for Living, multifunctional mono-blocks like his MiniKitchen for Boffi and Box 1 for La Linea, even going so far as to propose Future Habitats like Visiona 1 for Bayer, the Total Furnishing Unit for MOMA and even his own house in Via Argelati in Milan.
