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Marx is 90 years old!

A project designed by Richard Neutra in 1928

A 2018 to remember for Martinelli Luce that after the 50 years of the Cobra lamp, celebrates the 90th anniversary of Marx, the imposing lighting body designed by Richard Neutra in 1928. Richard Neutra, one of the masters of twentieth century architecture, was a real discovery for Elio Martinelli who was fascinated by the purity of his style. To understand the history of this lamp and why it was put into production by Martinelli Luce, it is necessary to start from 1991, when Dion Neutra, came to Lucca as guest of Elio and Emiliana Martinelli. The tune was immediate and Dion during a long conversation explained some features of his father's personality. For example, talking about the famous pools - that are fundamental in almost all of Richard Neutra's projects - his son Dion claimed that this design sign simply derived from their beauty: Richard Neutra designed them because he liked them! And it is this extraordinary simplicity that struck Elio Martinelli, enough to convince him to realize the Marx lamp. Martinelli had at his disposal only a very small reduction in blueprint of an old design, to be interpreted from a technological point of view, and a yellowed photograph of the only prototype. All quoted in inches!

The images describe the characteristics of the furnishing object, in fact Marx is a wall lamp, where the organic component prevails in the type of intervention on the light that is articulated and enriched. The formal vocabulary, the elements that make up (a curved blade, a grid of horizontal elements, a wooden frame) are micro-signs of its architectural vocabulary (the villa Von Sternberg, the Miramar Chapel). A complex project that did not intimidate Elio Martinelli but rather pushed him to face with conviction the challenge for the realization of this "intense" lamp that expresses in its formal essence, the geometric rigor for which Neutra is known. Marx is a sculpture of light that projects luminous signs on the wall, as if to show that emotions can have a form (as the subtitle of one of the essays written by Neutra recited).

Details

  • Via Teresa Bandettini, 55100 Lucca LU, Italy
  • Marco Ghilarducci