Enzo Catellani

Enzo Catellani (1950-) has rightly been defined by many important critics as "the poet of light". Self-taught, his activity as a designer and artist was born almost by chance: in fact, he ran a lamp shop in Bergamo when, driven by curiosity and creativity, he decides to try to make his own creations. His first lamp - the Torciù model, still in production today - was thus born, in the basement of the store, was presented at the Frankfurt Motor Show and immediately achieved enormous success. It was 1989, the year of the beginning of a great adventure: it was then that Enzo founded his Catellani & Smith company, through which he produces new collections of lamps every year. He is an eclectic designer, devoid of external influences other than those of the imagination, who works without projects on paper but lets himself be carried away by intuitions and experiments on prototypes. Precisely for this reason his projects, now children of an almost Dadaist game, now wrapped in the shimmering reflections of a luxurious gold leaf, are always enriched with a unique and inimitable touch.