Alex Coles

The Complete Designers' Lights 1950-1990 II Alex Coles

Clémence and Didier Krzentowski--the founders and directors of the leading contemporary design gallery Kreo, whose program includes designers such as the Bouroullec brothers, Martin Szekely and Konstantin Grcic--have been collecting lights for 30 years. Focusing particularly on Italian and French design, their collection is the most important of its kind today, spanning creations from the 1950s to the 1990s with special attention to the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. It includes large groups of works by Pierre Paulin, Pierre Guariche, Achille Castiglioni and the biggest collection of works by Gino Sarfatti, who, according to the Krzentowskis, is "the best of his category, because he was a long-lasting researcher of forms and techniques. As soon as a new bulb was created, he was doing a new lamp that was completely minimal." This new expanded paperback edition of The Complete Designers' Lights (1950-1990) provides priceless documentation and a visual guide for those interested in light design and furniture history. Conceived as a catalogue raisonné of nearly 500 lights, this book also includes a discussion between Didier Krzentowski, the design historian and curator of the Paris Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Constance Rubini, and the journalist and design critic Pierre Doze, as well as an essay by the design and art critic Alex Coles focusing on the relationship between light design and light art, mainly through a parallel study of Gino Sarfatti's and Dan Flavin's works.