Son of a small industrialist, Cesare Colombo was born in 1930 in Milan – only later did he adopt the pseudonym of ‘Joe’. Trained at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, after a short period of activity as an artist within the Nuclear Movement, together with Enrico Baj and Sergio Dangelo, from 1960 on the advice of Bruno Munari he decided to devote himself exclusively to industrial design. Here is what was said:
It happened that a friend Bruno Munari, a fan of design, who anticipated and took for granted the end of figurative art... persuaded Joe Colombo that the only thing was to give himself to design, because painting was finished... and he had to be translated into the ideology of mass product production.
While Colombo gradually moved away from artistic experiences, his brother Gianni founded Group T in 1959 with Davide Boriani, Giovanni Anceschi and Gabriele Devecchi, which quickly became one of the most important groups of kinetic and programmed art in Italy. By 1961 Columbus' popularity had reached the United States. Magazines and newspapers praised his name: "America discovers Columbus and not vice versa.”
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Attracted by the most advanced materials and technologies, Colombo conceived the living space as "a total domestic environment", a large efficient and equipped machine where each functional and autonomous nucleus must respond to the needs of modern man.
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Colombo looked to the future with a playful and ironic streak. Even the apparently simplest object could become an object in transformation, science fiction. His creations are often made up of components to be assembled, disassembled and stacked, according to the taste and needs of those who used them. The 4867 chair, solid, stackable and colored, was the first industrial chair in the world, made of ABS plastic and injection moulded in a single piece.
Essential, modular and flexible, the Tube Chair is one of the many iconic pieces that Joe Colombo has left us. Designed in 1969, this armchair is made up of four hollow cylinders that can be combined differently, through metal fixing hooks, so as to obtain different seating configurations.
So futuristic are his pieces that they even appeared in the 2012-15 dystopian film series The Hunger Games.
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Though he died prematurely at the age of 41, Colombo was animated by an authentically utopian streak combined with an interest in mechanics, and he anticipated many lines of research that developed during the ‘70s. Despite his short career, he has left us objects that are still considered milestones of contemporary design for technological innovation, aesthetics and functionality.
Explore Joe Colombo objects with Barnebys
Article by Giulia Mastropietro