Gae Aulenti (1927-2012)Triennale Milano
In 1964, Gae Aulenti designed a room for the 13th Triennale di Milano dedicated to leisure time, which, for Italy, had been a discovery and consequence of the economic boom. For Aulenti, the prize-winning environment, entitled L’arrivo al mare, was a major achievement.
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In it, the wood silhouettes of women running were taken from a 1922 painting by Pablo Picasso.
Gae Aulenti (1927-2012)Triennale Milano
In 1968, Gae Aulenti designed the interior of the Olivetti showroom in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which sold typewriters and calculators and for which she invented the King Sun lamp.
The Olivetti company, with which she had remained in contact since 1952, was pivotal to the launching of Gae’s career, thanks to the work opportunities and especially the relations it provided.
Gae Aulenti (1927-2012)Triennale Milano
In 1973, Gae Aulenti designed the interior of the Fiat showroom in Zurich, inventing a new way of presenting the cars, making the street seemingly enter through the walls of the building. Fiat and the Agnelli family, in particular Gianni and Marella, were among the architect’s most important patrons.
Gae Aulenti (1927-2012)Triennale Milano
In 1973, Gae Aulenti built an apartment for the Brion family in San Michele di Pagana, in Liguria. The Brion were the owners of the Brionvega company, which produced radios and televisions renowned for their iconic designs.
Numerous objects designed by Gae are exhibited in this living room, from the table and sofas to the lamps.
Gae Aulenti (1927-2012)Triennale Milano
In 1973 Gae Aulenti mounted an exhibition of the Bulgarian artist Christo in the Rotonda della Besana in Milan. The show, curated by Germano Celant, documented Christo’s work from the previous year entitled Valley Curtain, a gigantic orange curtain stretched across a valley in Colorado.
For the exhibition, Gae designs, with a series of white walls and lowering the height of the ceiling, a new space that inserts itself between the columns of the ancient building.
Gae Aulenti (1927-2012)Triennale Milano
In 1977, Gae Aulenti characterizes and furnishes the space where Euripides’ The Bacchae was performed by a single actress, Marisa Fabbri, moving through the corridors of an ex-orphanage in Prato.
The play was directed by Luca Ronconi who, along with Gae Aulenti, launched the Laboratorio di Progettazione Teatrale, where new forms of communication were invented.
Gae Aulenti (1927-2012)Triennale Milano
In 1986, having finished the restoration of the 18th-century Palazzo Grassi in Venice, Gae Aulenti mounted in its rooms the Futurismo & Futurismi exhibition, curated by Pontus Hultén. The building had been acquired by Fiat, and Gae would go on to design the displays of some twenty exhibitions there.
She also designed the room furnishings, from the lights, devised in collaboration with Piero Castiglioni, to the sofas.
Gae Aulenti (1927-2012)Triennale Milano
In 1986, on 1 December, Gae Aulenti completed the transformation of the Gare d’Orsay from a Belle Époque train station into the Musée d’Orsay, dedicated to the great figurative tradition in art between 1848 and the First World War.
In agreement with Michel Laclotte, the future director of the Louvre, Gae designed every detail, including the long seats on which the sculptures are disposed.
Gae Aulenti (1927-2012)Triennale Milano
In 1994, Gae Aulenti invented the Galleria dei Disegni, a space on the ground floor of Triennale Milano’s Palazzo dell’Arte, to be used for temporary exhibitions. It was provided with the indispensable security, temperature, and humidity controls to ensure proper conditions for exhibitions involving loans from the world’s great museums.
This corridor is the only surviving section of the Galleria.
Gae Aulenti (1927-2012)Triennale Milano
In 1994, Gae Aulenti created the sets for Richard Strauss’s Elektra, her last work for La Scala in Milan. The opera was directed by Luca Ronconi and conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli.
The palace of Mycene, site of the bloody tragedy of Electra, Orestes and Clytemnestra, was conceived as a butcher shop.
Gae Aulenti (1927-2012)Triennale Milano
In 1999, Gae Aulenti designed the Spazio Oberdan cultural center in the Porta Venezia area of Milan. The center features rooms for art exhibitions and a movie theatre, run by the Cineteca Italiana, part of which is recreated here.
Spazio Oberdan was closed in 2019.
Gae Aulenti (1927-2012)Triennale Milano
In 2001, Gae Aulenti designed the Museo subway station in Naples as part of a project that commissioned famous architects to propose various new subway stops.
Contemporary artworks were featured in these stations, to bring art inevitably into everyone’s life. For the Museo station, Gae had the idea of displaying reproductions of artworks exhibited in the adjacent National Archeological Museum, including the famed horse protome.
Gae Aulenti (1927-2012)Triennale Milano
In 2012, Gae Aulenti completed the construction of the terminal of the San Francesco d’Assisi Umbria International Airport, located between Perugia and Assisi.
The series of pavilions is designed to dialogue with the surrounding landscape and is characterized by the color red, Gae’s favorite. The airport was inaugurated on 10 November 2021; Gae had died on 31 October.
