EXHIBITION FOCUSING ON ITALIAN ARCHITECT AND DESIGNER GIO PONTI TO OPEN AT THE BUSCH-REISINGER
For Immediate Release:
January 13, 1998
Cambridge, Massachusetts - The special exhibition Gio Ponti and the Villa Planchart will be on display in the Busch-Reisinger Museum from January 24 through March 8, 1998.* The exhibition highlights the work of Italian architect and designer Gio Ponti (1891–1979), best known in this country for his designs for the Pirelli Tower in Milan (1956), the Denver Art Museum (1970), and the Superleggera chair, designed in 1955 and still in widespread production today. The exhibition focuses on one of Ponti's masterworks, the Villa Planchart, a private home built in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1956. The first in a series of collaborative efforts between the Harvard University Art Museums and the Graduate School of Design, this exhibition is organized by Monica Ponce de Leon, assistant professor of architecture, Jorge Silvetti, professor and chair of the department of architecture, and Brooke Hodge, director of exhibitions, Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Gio Ponti and the Villa Planchart also marks the Graduate School of Design's new initiative in the design arts.
Gio Ponti's hand is evident throughout most of the Villa Planchart project. He designed not only the house but selected all the furnishings and decorative objects-many of which were also designed by him-and carefully planned and executed the relationship between architecture and landscape. Gio Ponti and the Villa Planchart will be the first exhibition to provide a comprehensive overview of the entire house and its contents and will include original photographs and drawings as well as examples of the decorative objects and furniture from the Villa. In addition, a selection of letters between architect and client and photographs of the villa under construction will illuminate both the design process and the special relationship between Ponti and the Plancharts. The villa itself, which is still inhabited by the original client, Anala Planchart, is well-preserved today but has never before been extensively documented.
Gio Ponti's work is characterized by grace and clarity. His work of the 1950s, perhaps his most productive period, embodies principles he pursued throughout his career in all areas of design: the development of finite form, simplified and reduced to its essential elements; lightness, transparency, and immateriality-both architecture and objects were sharpened and stripped of their visual weight. Walls appear to be detached from one another as well as from roof and ground, often with the appearance of thin, perforated, hanging screens, while chairs can be lifted with one finger and decorative objects seem origami-like in their crispness and delicacy.
Ponti's practice flourished at a time when, and in a country where, it was not unusual for one trained as an architect to work in a number of different spheres. During an extraordinary career that spanned more than fifty years and that was astonishing for its breadth, Ponti designed buildings and ship interiors; furniture; decorative objects and fabrics; stage sets and exhibitions; taught architecture; wrote many books and articles; and founded and edited two magazines, Domus and Stile. His was a practice marked by the continuity of an individual expression that was shaped both by the times and by his own spirit. He made no distinction between art and craft, working comfortably in both, and promoted the manufacture of objects and furnishings using the latest techniques and materials of industrial production.
Ponti believed that "architecture is made to be looked at." It is public landscape. "Facades are the wall of the street, and a city is made of streets; the facades are the visible part of the city, they are all of the city that appears."
Materials in the exhibition have been loaned by the Ponti Family in Milan, Cassina SpA, Milan, the Planchart Foundation in Caracas, the Archives of the University of Parma in Parma, Italy, and a number of private collections.
A complementary exhibition on Gio Ponti and the Villa Planchart will be on display at Gund Hall Gallery, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, from February 16 through March 19, 1998. The Graduate School of Design is located at 48 Quincy Street in Cambridge. For further information please call (617) 495-4784.
Gallery talks Gallery talks are free with the price of admission to the Art Museums. Hearing assists are available for gallery talks; arrangements should be made beforehand by phoning (617) 495-8286. To request a sign language interpreter, the public should call (617) 495-2397 using Massachusetts Telephone Relay Service 1-800-439-2370 three weeks in advance of the gallery talk.
Sunday, February 22 at 2:00 p.m., Busch-Reisinger Museum
Monica Ponce de Leon, assistant professor of architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Sunday, March 1, 2:00 p.m., Busch-Reisinger Museum
Brooke Hodge, director of exhibitions, Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
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The Harvard University Art Museums' facilities are wheelchair accessible. For general information, please call (617) 495-9400. For press information or photographs, please contact Kate McShea Ewen at (617) 495-2397. For more information on events, please contact the Friends, Fellows, and Special Programs Office at (617) 495-4544. World Wide Web: www.artmuseums.harvard.edu.
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The Harvard University Art Museums comprise three museums (Busch-Reisinger Museum, Fogg Art Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum), all located on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, MA, at the intersection of Quincy Street and Broadway, adjacent to Harvard Yard. The Art Museums are open Monday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., and Sunday 1:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Closed holidays. Admission is $5.00; $4.00 for senior citizens; $3.00 for students; free under 18 and on Saturday mornings. For special tour reservations, please call (617) 496-8576. General tours are offered Monday through Friday from September through June. The Fogg tour is at 11:00 a.m.; the Busch-Reisinger tour is at 1:00 p.m.; and the Sackler is at 2:00 p.m.
The Harvard University Art Museums is supported in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. -end