Alessandro Mendini

Alessandro Mendini was born in Milan in 1931 and graduated in Architecture from the Politecnico di Milano. His eclectic nature led him, from a young age, to engage in numerous activities. In addition to his work as an architect and designer, he was a founding member of Global Tools, a free school for individual creativity, and served as editor of prestigious magazines such as Casabella (from 1970 to 1976), Modo (from 1977 to 1981), and Domus (from 1979 to 1985). In some cases, he revived these magazines from a state of real stagnation, restoring their vitality thanks to a significant cultural and ideological contribution.

In 1976, the Alchimia group was founded, of which Mendini became a member and, above all, a theorist, proposing the involvement of all sectors: industry, craftsmanship, and art. These designers aimed to resolve—not an easy task—the conflict between modernity and postmodernity, promoting a revival of artisanal techniques, creating modified and de-functionalized everyday objects, returning to assemblage, and affirming the priority of decorating ordinary objects.

Mendini thus addressed the issue of the historical movements of the modernist avant-garde in the face of the evident crisis of modernity and the ever-faster technological evolution. He described contemporaneity as divided between two characteristics:

“the decadent one, full of instances that must die, and the one full of opposing, primitive instances, which could lay the foundations for all the theories of the early 2000s.”

Mendini claimed to practice craftsmanship with technological materials, influenced by computer imagery, but then to paint with brushes. In recent years, he developed a particular interest in art and exclusively pictorial space. For Alchimia as well, the functions and forms of the home had to be subordinate to pictorial symbols, and the designer could become a painter through “decoration”: in this way, the project would no longer be the domain of objectivity, and painting would no longer be only an expression of subjectivity.

Mendini’s paintings are only apparently “cold,” but are above all far from any label of “new geometry” and conceal a rare harmony of shapes and colors. They are comic panels painted or simply oil canvases, in which one finds the formal stylistic features that symbolize Mendini’s theory. Thus extracted, they assume a strongly expressive, harmonious, and dreamlike value.

Mendini stated:

“Style is a sort of organized way of letting stylistic features that interest you pass through, making them circulate in your mind and returning them as drawings. I collect something from the Egyptian era, from Futurism, from Cubism, then I rework them according to concepts such as the hermaphrodite, the banal, the chromatic; and this relationship creates a style that, in reality, takes shape as a working method. Style is something different when talking about design or art, because the artist has greater freedom than a designer, who always works with a team.”

Alessandro Mendini was a member of the scientific committee of Les Ateliers school in Paris, an honorary member of the Basel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, and coordinator of the International Biennial of Handicrafts in Venice. He was a full professor at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Vienna and taught in numerous schools and universities.

In 1978, he published the book Paesaggio casalingo for the publisher Domus. In 1979, he received the Compasso d’Oro for design. In 1981, he published Architettura addio for Shakespeare and Company, and in 1982, Progetto infelice for Ricerche Design. He was named Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in France.

Mendini passed away in Milan in 2019.