Bobo Piccoli

Bobo Piccoli (1927–1981) was an Italian artist and a key figure in Milan’s postwar art scene, at the center of a circle that gravitated between the Brera Academy and the famous Bar Jamaica. Primarily a painter, his work went through several phases and drew inspiration from some of the most influential avant-gardes of the twentieth century: in his early years he looked above all to Picasso and Cubism, later moving first toward Art Informel and then toward Surrealism. From the 1950s onward, an important thread in his career was the dialogue between art and architecture, through collaborations with figures such as Roberto Menghi and Marco Zanuso. One of his best-remembered works in this vein is the polychrome marble floor he created in 1973 for the seventeenth-century Palazzo delle Stelline in Milan. In the late 1960s he also had a stint as a designer in collaboration with the lighting company FontanaArte, producing among other works the Re and Regina lamps (1968), inspired by chess pieces.