Arteluce "Triennale" Floor Lamp
About the Item
Arteluce
The lighting maker Arteluce was one of the companies at the heart of the creative explosion in postwar Italian design. The firm’s founder and guiding spirit, Gino Sarfatti (1912–85), was an incessant technical and stylistic innovator who almost single-handedly reinvented the chandelier as a modernist lighting form.
Sarfatti attended the University of Genoa to study aeronautical engineering but was forced to drop out when his father’s company went out of business. His mechanical instincts led him to turn his attention to lighting design — and he founded Arteluce as a small workshop in Milan in 1939. Sarfatti’s father was a Jew, so the family fled to Switzerland in 1943, but after the war — largely thanks to Sarfatti’s insistence on efficiency of design and manufacture — Arteluce quickly established itself as a top firm.
Though Sarfatti continued as chief designer through the 1950s and ’60s, he also enlisted other designers such as Franco Albini and Massimo Vignelli to contribute work. Sarfatti sold Arteluce to FLOS — a rival Italian lighting maker — in 1973 and retired to pursue a more traditional avocation: collecting and dealing rare postage stamps.
Sarfatti is regarded by many collectors as a pioneer of minimalist design. He pared down his lighting works to their essentials, focusing on practical aspects such as flexibility of use. His most famous light, the 2097 chandelier, is a brilliant example of reductive modernist design, featuring a central cylinder from which branches numerous supporting fixtures extending like spokes on a wheel.
Similarly, Sarfatti's 566 table lamp is a simple canister, able to be raised or lowered on a stem, holding a half-chrome bulb. Despite the marked functionality of his designs, Sarfatti did have a sprightly side: His 534 table lamp, with its cluster of rounded enameled shades, resembles a vase full of flowers, the Sputnik chandelier (model 2003) was inspired by fireworks and the brightly colored plastic disks of the 2072 chandelier look like lollipops. No matter the style, Sarfatti concentrated first and foremost on the character of light created — and any Arteluce lamp is a modernist masterpiece.
Find vintage Arteluce table lamps, chandeliers, floor lamps and other lighting on 1stDibs.
You May Also Like
Mid-20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Floor Lamps
Marble, Chrome
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Floor Lamps
Aluminum, Steel, Chrome
Mid-20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Floor Lamps
Marble, Carrara Marble, Steel, Metal
Vintage 1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Floor Lamps
Brass, Steel
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Floor Lamps
Metal, Aluminum, Chrome
Vintage 1940s Italian Mid-Century Modern Floor Lamps
Metal, Aluminum, Chrome, Iron
20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Floor Lamps
Chrome
Vintage 1970s Dutch Mid-Century Modern Floor Lamps
Aluminum, Chrome
Vintage 1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Floor Lamps
Metal, Aluminum
Vintage 1960s Italian Mid-Century Modern Floor Lamps
Marble, Iron, Tôle
More From This Seller
View AllVintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Floor Lamps
Enamel, Chrome
Vintage 1950s Italian Mid-Century Modern Floor Lamps
Brass, Enamel
Vintage 1950s Danish Scandinavian Modern Floor Lamps
Brass, Steel
Vintage 1980s Italian Mid-Century Modern Floor Lamps
Enamel, Steel
Vintage 1950s American Mid-Century Modern Table Lamps
Brass
Vintage 1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Table Lamps
Travertine
