Italian design legend Enzo Mari dies aged 88

The designer and artist was one of the forerunners of self-assembled furniture

Enzo Mari was known for his elegantly minimal designs. Getty Images

Enzo Mari, the renowned Italian artist and furniture designer, died on Monday aged 88.

Mari had a long career spanning six decades, during which he created works that traversed the realms of art, design and architecture. When it comes to his furniture designs, he is best known for his use of minimalist yet elegant forms, as seen in the Box chair and Elisa armchair.

He also sought to make design beautiful yet accessible, developing the Sedia chair  – a self-assembly piece made of pre-cut pine boards that customers could put together with nails and a hammer. The chair was part of the designer's 1974 project Autoprogettazione, a precursor to the DIY approach of contemporary furniture brands, which comprised design pieces made from basic and affordable materials.

Born in Cerano, Italy, in 1932, Mari moved to Milan and trained at the Brera Academy from 1952 to 1956, where he studied art and literature while honing his ideas in design methodology.

His encounter with Bruno Danese towards the end of the 1950s sharpened his focus on pursuing design. Danese was the entrepreneur behind his eponymous design brand, which was aimed at infusing art into quotidian life. Mari’s earlier collaborative work with Danese centred on objects, including vases, pencil holders and, most notably, wooden animal puzzles for children.

Another well-known piece from this era is his Perpetual Wall Calendar. Made of aluminium plates and PVC that could be shuffled in any order, the calendar could be used year after year without being replaced.

In the 1960s and ’70s, he began designing furniture pieces, including the stackable Delfina chair for Driade and the Tonietta chair for Zanotta, both of which won the Compasso d’Oro Award, the former in 1979 and the latter in 1987.

The driving force behind much of Mari’s work was his design philosophy, inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement, which arose out of the late Victorian period in England.

As industrialisation took hold of society, designers and thinkers turned to the value of craftsmanship, shunning industrial labour and mechanisation. This movement spread to the US, primarily influencing architect-designers.

In Mari’s case, he imbued his left-leaning political views on workers’ rights, environmentalism and anti-consumerism into his work. At the core of his creations is a concern for simplicity and functionality, with creations that could be used in everyday life by ordinary people. He developed more than 1,500 designs for various companies in his career.

Mari was also an artist and author, publishing a book of paintings, The Apple and the Butterfly, in the 1960s. His 1970s Autoprogettazione project was accompanied by a published guide to building one's own furniture.

As part of his last requests, the Italian designer’s archive will be donated to the city of Milan on the condition that it will not be shown for at least 40 years.

Currently, a retrospective of his work curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist with Francesca Giacomelli is on view as part of the Triennale Milano in Milan and will run until April 2021. The exhibition includes models, drawings and a selection of about 250 of Mari’s projects from the 1950s to 2010s.