Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays
Carlo Mollino (1905-1973) was an architect, designer, photographer and writer, not to mention a race-car driver and a pilot. His buildings include the Royal Theatre in Turin, and his furniture, like his photography, is ever more valuable. In 2005, a Mollino table sold for $3.8 million, setting a world record for twentieth-century decorative art.
Published by Silvana Editoriale. Edited with text by Francesco Zanot. Text by Enrica Bodrato, Erik Viskil, Fulvio Ferrari.
A New York Times critics' pick | Best Art Books 2019
Carlo Mollino was, among many other things, a photographer and a commentator on photography; Mollino himself placed photography in a privileged role in the pantheon of his interests.
Mollino used photography as both a means of expression and an essential instrument for the documentation of his work and his daily life, producing works that were both classical and experimental, public and private. He was also an eloquent champion of photography as an art form, publishing Message from the Darkroom in 1949—a legendary photobook that was part history of photography, part technical manual and gloriously lavish for both functions.
Carlo Mollino: Photographs 1934–1973 is a long-overdue survey of Mollino's full body of photographic work, published to accompany the largest and most complete exhibition ever staged of Mollino's photography. With more than 450 illustrations (some never before seen), this publication surveys Mollino's decades-long exploration of the medium, from his first architectural pictures to the erotic Polaroids of his later years, and contextualizes his work within the history of the discipline.
Among the most celebrated architects of the 20th century, Carlo Mollino (1905–73) was also a designer, photographer, writer, skier, racing driver and stunt pilot. He studied mechanical engineering, art history and architecture before beginning to work in the architectural practice of his father, Eugenio Mollino, in Turin. Mollino's architectural work in Turin—from his first great building, the headquarters of the Turin Equestrian Association (1937), to his architectural masterpiece, the city's Teatro Regio (1965)—bookends a career marked by elegant, organic modernism and a drive toward fantasy and experimentation.
Published by Damiani/Crump. Foreword by James Crump. Text by Fulvio Ferrari, Napoleone Ferrari, Silvio Curto.
In a career that spanned more than four decades, Carlo Mollino designed buildings, homes, furniture, cars and aircraft. One of the most dashing figures of mid-century Italy, Mollino was famed for his design finesse and his elegant organicism. In 1949 he published an important book on photography: Message from the Darkroom. Sometime around 1960, he began to seek out women-mostly dancers-in his native Turin, inviting them to his villa for late-night modeling sessions. The models would pose against extraordinary backdrops, designed by Mollino, in clothing, wigs and accessories that he had carefully selected. Finally, having printed the Polaroids, Mollino would painstakingly amend them with an extremely fine brush, to attain his idealized vision of the female form. The pictures, which totaled around 1,200, remained a secret until after his death, in 1973. Only a few were ever publically shown, until the acclaimed first edition of this volume was published by James Crump in 2002. Reviewing that book, The New Yorker declared, "This lavish selection of several hundred Polaroids preserves the essential mystery of a project both decadent and hermetic. Though clearly the product of a deep obsession, the photographs are deliberately impersonal, each baroque detail an invitation for the viewer to imagine Mollino's encounters with the women." Now back in print, with a newly designed cover, this beautiful volume offers a captivating portrait of a unique erotic sensibility. Carlo Mollino (1905-1973) studied mechanical engineering, art history and architecture before working in the architectural practice of his father, Eugenio Mollino, in Turin. His first architectural masterpiece was the Turin Equestrian Association headquarters (1937). In 1965 he designed the Teatro Regio in Turin, which is now regarded as one of his best works. A 1949 Mollino table was sold at auction by Christie's in 2005 for a staggering $3.8 million. In 1960-68 he designed an enigmatic apartment for himself that today has become the Museo Casa Mollino.
Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg. Edited by Gerald A. Matt. Text by Napoleone Ferrari, Lucas Gehrmann, Gerald A. Matt.
Carlo Mollino (1905–1973) was possessed of both tremendous energy and incredibly diverse abilities: famed as an architect and furniture designer, he was also a writer, photographer, race-car driver and downhill skier. His private life was no less intense. Mollino had a closely guarded obsession with erotic portraiture, and would regularly invite prostitutes from the streets of Turin to come to his home and pose for him. The scenes were carefully prepared: the models would dress (or partially undress) in costumes, accessories and wigs that Mollino had acquired on trips to France or Southeast Asia, and pose before backdrops of drapery, screens and sculptural furniture. Despite the furtive circumstances of their production, these portraits express the aesthetics of Mollino’s more public photographs, as the models appear more statuesque than pornographic. Likewise, the opulent interiors and opulent furnishings of Mollino’s private homes in Turin, the Villa Zaira and what is now known as Casa Mollino serve as crucial components of the compositions. In 1962, Mollino began to employ Polaroid film for these shoots, eventually making some 1,300 exposures before his death in 1973. Neither these nor the silver gelatin works that preceded them were published in his lifetime, and this is the first publication of these Polaroids.
Published by Mondadori Electa. Text by Lisa Ponti, Carmen Guererro, Fulvio Ferrari
Arabesques is a celebration of the life and achievements of Carlo Mollino (1905-1973)--architect, designer, author and photographer, and one of Italy's most extraordinary cultural innovators. In a 100 color and 80 black and white illustrations, and with commentary by an array of contemporary Mollino scholars, it examines his famously elegant furniture designs, a selection of his most iconic buildings, his wonderfully futuristic aeroplane and automobile designs and a portfolio of his photographic portraits of women. It reveals a man almost impossible to grasp in his entirety, with a ravenous intellect and a temperament both friendly and proud, whose work requires the attentions of several scholars--among them Lisa Ponti, Carmen Guererro and Fulvio Ferrari--to assess here. Yet Mollino's approach was itself often synthetic; his interiors (which were almost always commissioned) integrated his furniture, interior design and architecture towards a unified aesthetic environment, expressing a coherent aesthetic of elegance and energetic sinuousness. Arabesques makes sense of this rare instance of a true Renaissance man, and will sweep the reader up in Mollino's infectious energy and polymorphous genius.
PUBLISHER Mondadori Electa
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 9.5 x 11.75 in. / 288 pgs / 100 color / 80 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 8/31/2009 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2009 p. 111
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9788837048570TRADE List Price: $60.00 CAD $70.00
Everything is permissible as long as it is fantastic, Carlo Mollino once said, accurately describing his attitude towards design and architecture. Known as one of the most versatile architects of the twentieth century, Mollino, an amazing sportsman and inspiring creative force in many fields, designed a 23-apartment, Modernist ski chalet called Casa del Sole (House of the Sun) in Cevinia, Italy, in 1947. It is a perfect example of the lively complexity typical of his work. This beautifully produced, clothbound volume with a tipped-on cover image develops as a sort of architectural novel, including drawings, photographs and writings by Mollino about the design and building process. When it was built, Casa del Sole proposed to create modern yet economic housing that would help develop tourism in the Italian Alps after the Second World War--an extremely difficult period in that country's history. The architecturally sophisticated building was furnished very minimally, and pushed the conceptual vanguard of the time with its pared-down lines and use of basic industrial building materials. Later, the penthouse of the building was inhabited by the famous Austrian skier Leo Gasperl, the fastest man in the sport between 1932 and 1947. Mollino, also a passionate skier, an instructor and the author of a 334-page manual on ski technique, dreamed of a functional, disciplined building for the sportsman--a Modernist concrete structure utilizing the traditional stone and wood constructions of northern Italy.
PUBLISHER Museo Casa Mollino
BOOK FORMAT Hardback, 8.5 x 11 in. / 130 pgs / 239 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 3/1/2008 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2008 p. 51
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9788889082058TRADE List Price: $55.00 CAD $65.00
Published by Adarte. By Carlo Mollino. Introduction by Fulvio Ferrari .
Once upon a time, in the first half of the twentieth century, photography was considered a purely mechanical art--if it was considered an art at all. Carlo Mollino's Message From the Darkroom, originally published in Italy in 1949 and now one of the most coveted books in the history of photography, was one of the first strikes against that attitude, and one of the most visually extraordinary. In 323 plates illustrating the work of 132 photographers and nine painters, Mollino traced a history of the form and the evolution of taste over the years, highlighting the work of Nadar and Hill, Atget, Alvarez Bravo and Man Ray, with a chapter dedicated to each. An equal number of pages are allotted to mastery of photographic techniques, including retouching, as every means to make the print coincide with the artist's vision was legitimate in Mollino's eyes--even required. For work to reach the status of art and communicate the artist's message, it needed to move beyond the accidentally "beautiful" through crafted "subjective transformations." Message From the Darkroom is also a fundamental text in understanding Mollino's own development as a photographer--his work, like the book's first edition, is now widely collected. Here for the first time, this early plea for the acceptance of photography among the higher arts is being published in English. The new edition replicates the original, as designed by Mollino himself, with color tipped-in images again pasted in by hand. Limited quantities available.
PUBLISHER Adarte
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 9.75 x 13.5 in. / 448 pgs / 14 color 319 bw / 5 duotone.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 3/1/2007 Active
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2007 p. 31
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9788889082034TRADE List Price: $240.00 CAD $320.00
AVAILABILITY Out of stock
STATUS: Out of stock
Temporarily out of stock pending additional inventory.
Published by Museo Casa Mollino. Edited and with essays by Napoleone Ferrari and Fulvio Ferrari.
The Italian architect and designer Carlo Mollino held photography dear--it was one of his great passions and favorite means of expression, and an excellent way to enjoy another great passion, women. The photographs gathered here were all set in one of Mollino's private apartments, which he refurbished especially for this purpose. An advocate of retouching, as documented in his treatise The Message from the Dark Room, Mollino also painted on his photos or negatives. Most of what appears here has been revised, most bodies sculpted and reshaped, and visibly so now that time has altered the color of the prints, revealing his handiwork. This portfolio, spanning from 1956 to 1962, ends just before Mollino's Polaroid work of the 60s. It was made using a Leica and color negative film, and has never been published before.
PUBLISHER Museo Casa Mollino
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 10 x 11.5 in. / 336 pgs / 352 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 8/15/2006 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2006 p. 45
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780977880706TRADE List Price: $120.00 CAD $145.00
Carlo Mollino: Polaroids
Carlo Mollino: Un Messaggio dalla Camera Oscura
Carlo Mollino: Arabesques
Carlo Mollino: Casa del Sole
Message from the Darkroom
Carlo Mollino: Photographs 1956-1962