Ludovico ("Vico") Magistretti was born in Milan in Italy in 1920. He studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano until 1945. After working on various building projects in the 1950s, he turned to designing mass-produced products from the early 1960s onwards.
"With the softly curved Maui plastic chair, Vico Magistretti, the reserved grand seigneur of Italian designers, created a bestseller for the Italian company Kartell. In many ways, Maui is typical of Magistretti: innovative technology combined with practicality, but also with the courage to make a consistent statement. In this case, the statement is: I am affordable and well designed, but by no means elitist. Above all, Maui is typical of Magistretti because the chair has been a successful product for many years." (Source: Dumont Handbuch Design International)
Besides Kartell, Magistretti also designed successful products for other renowned companies: the Mezzachimera (1965) and Lara (1998) lights for Artemide, the Snow (1974) and Atollo (1977) lights for Oluce, the Carimate chair (1960), the Sindbad seating group (1981) and the Maralunga sofa (1973) for Cassina, and many other products for B&B Italia, Rosenthal, Fritz Hansen, FontanaArte, De Padova and Heller, to name just a few.
In 1960, Vico Magistretti also became a member of the Triennale commission and sat on the Compasso d'Oro jury. In the early 1960s, he lived in Venice and Florence, in Toronto in Canada and in Barcelona in Spain, and from 1980 he taught at the Royal College of Art in London in the UK.
Vico Magistretti received numerous awards for his work, including the Compasso d'Oro in 1967 and 1979 and first prize at the Cologne Furniture Fair in Germany in 1982. Some of Magistretti's works can also be found in the best-known design museums, such as MoMA in New York in the USA.
Ludovico Magistretti died on 19 September 2006, at the age of 86, in his home city of Milan.
