The illustrated biography of the brilliant designer, architect, photographer, pilot, and writer—an unstoppable creative mind with a thousand talents and passions.

In 1981, two young gallery owners—Paola and Rossella Colombari—happened upon the furniture of Carlo Mollino (1905–1973), an enigmatic, unclassifiable, and then-unknown figure in Italian design. When they organized the first Mollino furniture auction in Venice in 1985, they never imagined the sale would trigger a massive international collectors’ market for Mollino’s pioneering works. The designer’s sought-after objects would soon sell for millions. This volume presents a wealth of iconographic material—vintage photos, drawings, sketches, and photomontages drawn from Mollino’s archives at the Turin Politecnico—and some previously unpublished documents and images.

The book includes a contribution by the architect Mario Cucinella, and a photographic portfolio by Uli Weber. It is not an exhaustive critical monograph, but instead bears witness with novelistic sweep. The Colombari sisters write about Mollino’s creative mindset, his architecture and design, his photography, his lifelong passion for speed, his eroticism, and the overlap of his personal and professional life from a childhood in Turin through his death in 1973. No one could portray Mollino, the man and the artist, more convincingly than the two women who brought his legacy to light.

About The Author

Paola and Rossella Colombari are sisters born to a well-known family of antiques dealers in Turin. They founded their first gallery in Turin in 1981, focusing on modernism and the work of Carlo Mollino. In 1989, Paola moved to Milan, devoting herself to new avant-garde trends, before turning to contemporary art in the late 1990s. Rosella moved to Milan in 1991, opening a gallery that promotes twentieth-century fine design. She is the author of the reference book on Mollino’s design, Carlo Mollino. Catalogo dei mobili—Furniture Catalogue (2005).