Ennio Chiggio Lumenform 1970

Multidisciplinary artist, sculptor and designer Ennio Chiggio was not only known for his Space Age lamps and voluptuous, modular Environ sofas, but he was also renowned as a technological innovator, electronic music producer and researcher, who explored the relationship between mathematics and art. 

Born in 1938 in Naples, Chiggio studied technology and art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. While still in school, in 1957, Chiggio began painting kinetic art using tempera on cardboard and ink on paper. By 1960, he had joined the artists’ collective Gruppo N, founded by Alberto Biasi, Edoardo Landi, Manfredo Massironi and Toni Costa.

With Gruppo N, Chiggio participated in several exhibitions such as “Programmed Art,” presented by Italian intellectual Umberto Eco, which showed in Milan, Venice and Rome in 1962 and in London and New York in 1964. By the following year, Chiggio’s interests had turned to sound and music production, and he founded the Group of Experimental Phonology NPS (New Proposals Sound) with pianist and composer Teresa Rampazzi.

From 1964 to ’77, Chiggio operated a design studio that focused on furniture and lighting as well as glass and electromechanical objects. His most well-known lighting includes the Ciot floor lamp for Italian manufacturer Lumenform, sculptural table lamps and wall sconces for Emmezeta.

After closing his design studio in 1978, Chiggio dedicated his time to teaching, serving as a professor of design and industrial aesthetics at his alma mater. In 1996, he opened the Embtool multimedia research laboratory in Padua, where he made short films about art and architecture and conducted computational music research, exploring the relationship between mathematical models and artistic expression.

Throughout the 2000s until his death in 2020, Chiggio participated in several exhibitions at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, the MACBA Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Buenos Aires and Museum Ritter in Waldenbuch, Germany. Public collections throughout Italy and Germany also feature his works.

On 1stDibs, discover a range of innovative Ennio Chiggio furniture.

The modern floor lamp is an evolution of torchères — tall floor candelabras that originated in France as a revolutionary development in lighting homes toward the end of the 17th century. Owing to the advent of electricity and the introduction of new materials as a part of lighting design, floor lamps have taken on new forms and configurations over the years. 

In the early 1920s, Art Deco lighting artisans worked with dark woods and modern metals, introducing unique designs that still inspire the look of modern floor lamps developed by contemporary firms such as Luxxu. 

Popular mid-century floor lamps include everything from the enchanting fixtures by the Italian lighting artisans at Stilnovo to the distinctly functional Grasshopper floor lamp created by Scandinavian design pioneer Greta Magnusson-Grossman to the Paracarro floor lamp by the Venetian master glass workers at Mazzega. Among the more celebrated names in mid-century lighting design are Milanese innovators Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, who, along with their eldest brother, Livio, worked for their own firm as architects and designers. While Livio departed the practice in 1952, Achille and Pier Giacomo would go on to design the Arco floor lamp, the Toio floor lamp and more for legendary lighting brands such as FLOS. 

Today’s upscale interiors frequently integrate the otherworldly custom lighting solutions created by a wealth of contemporary firms and designers such as Spain’s Masquespacio, whose Wink floor lamps integrate gold as well as fabric fringes. 

Visual artists and industrial designers have a penchant for floor lamps, possibly because they’re so often a clever marriage of design and the functions of lighting. A good floor lamp can change the mood of any room while adding a touch of elegance to your entire space. Find yours now on 1stDibs.