ARRIVEDERCI ERNESTO GISMONDI…
Celebrating the life and legendary heritage of Artemide founder and president Esnesto Gismondi, deceased at age 89.

By Juli Pisano, for INT.design in 2021.

The Italian designer who founded lighting brand Artemide in 1960 with fellow designer Sergio Mazza and built it into the most innovative and successful Italian lighting companies ever has passed away on the eve of 2021, on December 31, 2020.

“In losing Ernesto Gismondi, we lose one of the design protagonists that has made Milan great,” said Milan’s mayor Giuseppe Sala.

“Ernesto Gismondi, a great innovator and friend, has left us,” tweeted Milanese architect Stefano Boeri, architect to the illustrious Bosco Verticale. “He illuminated the world, used plastic for the first time in furniture-making, raced with his head held high in the seas of politics and entrepreneurship, opened new horizons in design”, he went on. “I will miss his anti-rethorical genius,” Boeri added.

Born in San Remo in 1931, Gismondi was a member of the influential Memphis design movement cofounded by Ettore Sottsass.
When the latter created the Memphis movement one winter evening in 1980, the maestro knew he needed a partner who would provide him with industrial know-how, a good knowledge of the commercial part and a pronounced taste for avant-garde. He found all of these qualities combined in Gismondi, who played a large role in Memphis’s popularity by allowing its furniture to be mass-produced, unlike the other Milanese avant-garde movements that had preceded it.

Gismondi also designed a number of classic products for Artemide after founding the company in 1960 such as the Nur Suspension Light. In the 1980s, he continued to attract renowned architects such as Mario Botta, who created the Shogun lamp, the base of which resembles the facade of a Tuscan cathedral.

Nur Suspension

Shogun Lamp

But it was with designers spotted at the Memphis Group that he would land Artemide’s biggest success. Tolomeo by Michele de Lucchi and Giancarlo Fassina (1986) is the lamp that makes the editor change gear. Since its launch, it has sold nearly 500,000 copies each year. Artemide has a factory specially designed for the production of this model, now available in multiple versions.

Tolomeo – photograph: Erwitt Elliott

Gismondi held degrees in both aeronautical engineering and missile engineering and was associate professor of Rocket Engines for Missiles at Milan Polytechnic. He also received the Ernst & Young Prize for Entrepreneur of the Year in both 2008 and 2009 and was named a “Cavaliere del Lavoro,” an Italian award for important figures in industry, by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano. He was the vice president of ADI, Italy’s Association of Industrial Design, and won the Compasso D’Oro for lifetime achievement in 2018.

“Aerospace engineer, university lecturer and entrepreneur, in short: man of multifaceted talent,” said the Compasso D’Oro jury at the time of his nomination.

Ernesto was also a passionate self-taught sailor who named his seven sailboats Edimetra, an anagram of Artemide.

It would be impossible to retrace his life without mentioning his wife, Carlotta de Bevilacqua, herself an architect and designer. After having developed many models of lamps, in particular those with LED sources during the 2000s, she became the vice-president of the Artemide group and formed with her husband an ultra-creative tandem, turned towards innovation and search for a softer, more human light. Carlotta is the CEO and vice president of Artemide as well as the president of Danese.

Based in the Milan suburb of Pregnana Milanese, Artemide produces classic designs such as the 1972 Tizio desk lamp by Richard Sapper and the 1987 Tolomeo desk lamp by Michele de Lucchi.

The brand is now part of Artemide Group, which consists of numerous subsidiaries plus design brand Danese, which Artemide acquired in 2014. Gismondi was president of the brand at the time of his death.

ARTEMIDE CLASSICS MAKING HISTORY 
Over the span of six decades, Artemide has creatively designed and masterfully manufactured products that have become design landmarks, nothing less.

Here are a few Artemide classics that made history.

Eclisse Table Lamp,
design by Vico Magistretti for Artemide, 1965