Paolo Pallucco (b. 1950) Italian

Born in Rome in 1950 and trained as an architect, Paolo Pallucco occupies a singular position in the history of Italian design in the second half of the 20th century. At once a designer, publisher, entrepreneur, and theorist, he rejected from an early stage any separation between creation, production, and dissemination. This holistic approach made him one of the freest and most radical figures on the Italian design scene of the 1980s.

In 1980, he founded Pallucco, a company initially devoted to reissuing forgotten works of modernism, notably by Mariano Fortuny, Robert Mallet-Stevens, and René Herbst. Long before this phenomenon became commonplace, Paolo Pallucco contributed to the rediscovery of 1930s design and established an industrial production system of exceptional quality. This mastery of production would later allow him to develop his own furniture with a degree of technical freedom that was rare at the time.

From the mid-1980s onwards, Paolo Pallucco and Mireille Rivier jointly designed a series of pieces that are now considered among the most emblematic creations of Italian radical design. Tankette, Barba d’Argento, Bocca da Fuoco, and Bahut W il Toro subvert the codes of modern functionalism by introducing references to poetry, war, cinema, religion, and the history of architecture. In Pallucco’s work, furniture becomes a true cultural language, in which every detail contributes to a broader narrative.

This conceptual dimension reached its peak with 100 Sedie in una Notte (1990), the designer’s final project. In a single night, Paolo Pallucco conceived one hundred variations on a single chair, each accompanied by a poetic title written by Achille Bonito Oliva. Inspired by the verses of Rainer Maria Rilke, the series constitutes both a literary work and a manifesto on the infinite possibilities of design. Each chair was produced in a limited edition of only four pieces, making the ensemble one of the most ambitious and rarest projects in the history of contemporary design.

Alongside his own creations, Paolo Pallucco also played a major role as a design editor. He produced, among other works, furniture designed by Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons boutiques, as well as creations by several international designers. His company became a true laboratory where design, architecture, photography, and fashion converged. The photographic campaigns by Peter Lindbergh also contributed to shaping Pallucco’s distinctive visual identity.

Today, Paolo Pallucco is recognised as one of the major figures of Italian design of the 1980s. His work is the subject of extensive research led by Galerie Ketabi Bourdet, which dedicated the first retrospective exhibition in France to his work and continues to contribute to its rediscovery through exhibitions, publications, and presentations at leading international fairs.