Carlo Scarpa

CARLO SCARPA (Venice, 1906 - Japan, 1978) for Bernini.
Set of eight chairs "Kentucky". Italy, 1970s.
Walnut wood and black leather.
With light marks of use.
Measurements: 104 x 48,5 x 41 cm.

Set of 8 Kentucky chairs designed by Carlo Scarpa in the 1970s, produced by Bernini. The walnut wood structure is made of uprights and tubular crossbeams with handcrafted finish. They feature elegant high backs covered in black leather. Carlo Scarpa designed this chair for the "Scuderia" series, his last project for Bernini. He was inspired by the "Shaker" movement by drawing the chair slightly inclined at the front. This feature allows it to swing backwards, even leaning against a wall, and maintain its balance.

Carlo Scarpa studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, where he graduated in 1926. A prolific designer with a passion for glass as a material, in the late 1920s he designed his first pieces of furniture and began to attend the artistic and intellectual circles of Venice, where he met and became acquainted with important designers such as Giuseppe Ungaretti, Carlo Carra, Lionello Venturi, Diego Valeri and Giacomo Noventa. From 1933 he began working with the glass factory of Paolo Venini, a collaboration that lasted until 1947. His first exhibition took place at the Venice Biennale in 1932 and two years later at the Milan Triennale. Despite his wide-ranging and visionary talent, Scarpa designed relatively few furniture designs, which were delivered mainly for site-specific installations for private clients. In architecture, his most prominent project of the pre-World War II years is the restoration of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Venice. After the war, he would be commissioned to undertake many other restoration works, both for exteriors and interiors, and for the supervision and preparation of exhibitions; in his work, Scarpa often reveals himself to be influenced by Art Nouveau and by masters such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Josef Hoffmann. Scarpa focuses his architecture on the passage of time and the continuous change of objects and materials. Important projects in his career include the Galleria Canova in Possagno (Treviso) between 1955 and 1957; the Olivetti showroom in Piazza S. Marco, Venice (1957-1958); and Banca Popolare di Verona, on which Scarpa began work in 1973, to be completed after his death by Arrigo Rudi.