Italian work, 1988

H 160 x W 120 cm

Wood and mirror

Good condition

A wide black and white checkered frame, bordered all around by a yellow crenellation that extends beyond the surface, and surmounted by a small pennant of the same color. The mirror itself occupies a central square much smaller than its frame: the function is relegated to the center, the decoration occupies everything else.

Alessandro Mendini (1931-2019) is the central figure of Studio Alchimia, a Milanese workshop founded in 1976 that predates Memphis and established the principle of design liberated from function. Mendini developed the concept of "redesign": taking an ordinary object and covering it with a design that shifts its meaning. "Ollo," designed in 1988, applies this principle to a mirror—the most commonplace object in an interior becomes a graphic surface.

A piece from a generation of mirrors that Alchimia made a manifesto of, at a time when the movement had reached maturity. Good condition.