Carlo De Carli (Milan, Italy, 1910-1999)
Follower and friend of Gio Ponti, Carlo De Carli was both a furniture designer and a promoter of Italian furniture, actively engaged in encouraging relationships between designers, craftsmen, industrialists, architects, teachers and companies. Since his starts in the 1930s, De Carli aimed to combine functionality and forms that go beyond the rationalist rigidity, working on dynamic geometric shapes which create a plastic tension, typical of his furnishings. After the Second World War, he began his most fertile production period; he designed chairs and tables that, in the 1950s, were produced by brands such as Cassina (like the 683 chair, winner of the first Compasso d’Oro prize in 1954), Tecno, Sormani, Longhi and Cinova, thus achieving an increasing internationalization for Italian design. In 1962, Gio Ponti was succeeded by De Carli in the chair of Interior architecture, Furniture and Decoration at the Polytechnic University of Milan.
