Just about 60 chairs in 60 years: Vico Magistretti's design passion

At the Fondazione Studio Museo Magistretti, an exhibition tells a declared obsession: that for the chair, which has spanned sixty years of career and design.

A sixty-year story (and sixty-six chairs)

Not just an exhibition, but a chronological and emotional journey into the world of design through an iconic and ruthless object: the chair. Approximately 60 chairs in 60 years, on display until February 26, 2026 at the Vico Magistretti Foundation Studio Museum, stems from an obsession with the most challenging object to design, according to him. Sixty-six chairs on display, designed over six decades, precisely and lightly narrate the evolution of Magistretti's style, his formal poetics, and the technical and productive challenges.

The curator in the archive, the chair as a story

Luca Poncellini, curator of the exhibition, literally inhabited the archive of Studio Magistretti. He reopened the files, faxes, drawings, minutes, patents, and photographs. A meticulous work that allowed not only to reconstruct the technical details, but also the design intentions of Magistretti, his way of reinterpreting tradition with a contemporary spirit, of being inspired by biographies and personal visions. What emerges is a story about chairs, which also becomes a story about a man and his time.

Timeline and Sessions: an exhibition to read and experience

The exhibition path is divided into two sections: a visual timeline with original drawings and photographs, and an immersive space with a dozen chairs to sit on, literally, to experience Vico's choices. Each chair is accompanied by narrative notebooks that tell the idea, the genesis, the collaborations, the difficulties - even legal ones - encountered during production. An invitation to enter the mind of a designer, to feel the weight of the material, the balance of the forms, the tension between function and emotion.

Vico Magistretti's legacy in a single typology

If there is one object that, more than others, can encapsulate Vico Magistretti's design universe, it is the chair. Emblem of rigor and creative freedom, a daily object but never banal, a threshold between art and industry. Approximately 60 chairs in 60 years is therefore an unprecedented and collective portrait of the Milanese master, of his coherence, his contradictions, his design irony. A precious opportunity to retrace the history of Italian design through an intimate and radical perspective.

Gallery

Cover image: Archive Studio Magistretti, Vico Magistretti Foundation

Text images: No.1 Archive Studio Magistretti, Vico Magistretti Foundation No.2 Archive Studio Magistretti, Vico Magistretti Foundation Photo by P. Imperatori No.3 Courtesy Flou No.4 S. Maielli

Gallery images: From No.1 to No.4 S. Maielli from No.5 to No.7 Archive Studio Magistretti, Vico Magistretti Foundation No.8 Courtesy Fritz Hansen No.9 Courtesy Cassina No.10 Archive Studio Magistretti, Vico Magistretti Foundation