Pietro Chiesa

Private European Collection, circa 1938
Thence by descent
Acquired from the above by the present owner

"Mobili Italiani per la Casa Italiana," Domus, no. 141, September 1939, p. 64 (for a period photograph of the model)
Gio Ponti, "L'Opera di Pietro Chiesa," Domus, no. 234, March 1949, p. 39, fig. 28 (for a period photograph of the model)
Laura Falconi, Fontana Arte: Una Storia Transparente, Milan, 1998, p. 210, no. 83 (for a period photograph of the model)
Franco Deboni, Fontana Arte: Gio Ponti, Pietro Chiesa, Max Ingrand, Turin, 2012, no. 196 (for another example of the model)

Overall in very good condition. When viewed in person, the cabinet presents with a vibrant and saturated blue mirrored surface, which is even more intense than seen in the catalogue illustration. The glass presents with a few minor irregularities, air bubbles and particulate inclusions inherent in the making and not at all visually distracting. The glass surfaces with a few minor surface scratches consistent with age and gentle use. The walnut surfaces present with minor surface scratches, minor abrasions, a few areas of discoloration and light surface dirt consistent with age and gentle use. The top of the cabinet with four minor cracks in the veneer, two on each side of the cabinet and stable, the longest one to the proper left measuring approximately 1 ¾ in. in length. The top with a few minor losses to the veneer, only visible upon close inspection and not at all visually distracting. Two other minor cracks to theproper right and proper left sides of the cabinet along the lower edge, measuring approximately 1 ¾ in. in length and stable. The front of the cabinet with a few minor abrasions to the lower edge, visible in the catalogue illustration and not at all visually distracting. The proper left front door with a minor loss to the proper right bottom molded edge along 2 ¾ in to the left side and a minor split to the right side. The right and left back edges of the cabinet with a few minor remnants of white house paint, hardly visible when the cabinet is placed on the wall. The metal surfaces with minor surface scratches, light surface dirt and minor traces of oxidation consistent with age and gentle use. The interior of the cabinet is in very good condition with minor surface scratches and surface dirt consistent with age and gentle use. The central shelf of the cabinet slides out to form a deeper shelf when the cabinet is open. A design masterpiece and defining work, combining Pietro Chiesa innovative vision as a designer and Fontana Arte flawless craftsmanship. -----
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Pietro Chiesa’s mirrored cabinet is an extraordinary execution of what Gio Ponti has called Chiesa’s sense of the “essential… a line pulled to the extreme of pure contour.” The fluid lines and dynamic form provide a field of exploration, notably the inherent ambivalence of the luxurious mirrored surface – a surface that is both solid and evocative of immateriality, offering a juxtaposition of finite material and infinite viewer through reflection and undulation.

Chiesa became the Art Director of Luigi Fontana’s famed Fontana Arte enterprise in 1934, at a time when Italian Futurism celebrated cutting-edge technology, relentless movement, and the deconstruction of form. The combination of Chiesa’s creative genius and Fontana Arte’s technical mastery led to the creation of iconic designs in furniture, including the present lot.  In addition to the present lot, only one other example of this cabinet is known today, executed in pale turquoise mirrored glass. The present offering represents the most saturated and desired blue tonality. 

With this vibrant blue, Chiesa introduced what became one of the firm’s signature colors. It was later displayed on their palette of glass samples as “blue chiaro argentato,” (loosely, “silvered or mirrored blue”). The use of blue coloration is historically noted in chemistry inventories related to pigmentation in oil painting, and cobalt blue glass was notably affiliated especially to luxury, dating back to the use of smalt or blue glass ingots traded in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. Smalt, when ground to a powder, was incorporated into the coveted blue tones of ultramarine and lazurite oil pigments favored in the sumptuous Northern and Italian Renaissance paintings, as well as the later (paler) Prussian blue pigments more widely used in the mid-nineteenth century by Impressionist painters. The historic elitism embedded within the azure hue is heightened here by the mirrored cabinet’s contemporary connection with Italian design of the absolute highest quality available in modern glassmaking and furniture design in the 1930s. It is also the color of immateriality and dreams: a few years later, Yves Klein would develop his own particular brand of blue, creating monochrome paintings that he called “open windows to freedom”. For Yves Klein, blue is the most abstract color, “the color of pure space,” beyond what can be seen or touched: although Chiesa’s cabinet is a functional piece, its blue makes it a timeless object of art.

This undulating cabinet with its blue reflections has further reverberations in the work of many contemporary artists, suggestive of minimalist and contemporary sculpture. The noted British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor works famously with mirrored and distorted surfaces in his installations, underscoring that the use of “mirrored objects… seem to be very active, in various states of becoming.”  Chiesa’s blue mirrored panels suggest the historic connection of mirrors to the apocryphal astral plane in neo-Platonic philosophy, and the notion of liminality embedded within the glass surface through its unending reflection into another world – this type of distortion is sought after and manipulated in the large-scale mirrored sculpture installations of Kapoor.

This intersection of conceptual art embedded within design was in fact touted by Gio Ponti’s analysis of Chiesa’s work in March 1949, verging on dogmatic captivation:  “I describe these cabinets as "essential".  Their essentiality consist in an absolute purification of elements, in a sign of extreme purity in shape, of flawless calligraphy, that make us excited, when we look at them.
For those who know how to look, these shapes go beyond any taste, they are exact, they are the exact, true shapes of these things: they are the successful shape.  In these classical creations by Chiesa, we find that purity that make them static, a stillness of purity, an abstract statics of their own. They are works of abstract art.” Ponti’s rhetoric, invoking the relationship of abstract art with design, is suggestive of the pure forms associated with Minimalist artists such as Donald Judd’s “Progressions” series in 1979-1980. Judd’s large wall installations juxtapose raw and reflective surfaces executed in galvanized iron, brass, copper, and clear or colored anodized aluminum, many examples with a cobalt blue tonality that hark back to the luminous silvered blue in the present lot. The connections of essential line in the sculptures are deeply evocative of the relationship between form and space – a relationship that Chiesa’s own work sought to convey, notably in a 1940 declaration that he “[despised] creating useful objects,” in favor of conceptual applications of essential materials and pure form.

It is this engagement with essential form and the aura of mirrored immateriality, that places this work as an absolute masterwork produced by Fontana Arte, ultimately demonstrating the unique union of function and aesthetic philosophy in this strikingly Modern, impeccably crafted cabinet.