Even art against the terrible Covid-19. Artists and galleries offer their works for a fundraiser that combines beauty with generosity. Flavio Lucchini is among them.

"Beauty will save the world" wrote Dostoevskij in one of his famous novel, and never as in this moment of fear and uncertainty our eyes would like to be filled with beauty, whether it be a natural landscape, an exotic journey, a work of art…
Emotions that only partially the virtual world can evoke.
When the desire for beauty is combined with the desire to help the forces in the field that fight against the virus that has upset our lives, the marriage is perfect. As for the initiative of Blindarte, gallery and auction house based in Milan and Naples, which launched the "ART to STOP COVID-19" project, an online auction where you can buy at very attractive prices a rich selection of art works both contemporary and modern, antique paintings, art design, drawings, also photography and graphics.
All proceeds support the Lombardy region or the Pascale Institute of Naples, to be chosen by the purchaser...

Today should have been the first official opening day of Salone 2020, with the corollary of Fuorisalone in the city and Superdesign Show at Superstudio. We miss immensely the Milan Design Week, the beneficial tsunami of creativity, the excitement, the curiosity, the sociality, the beauty, the innovation, the vision, the whole world that, for a week, were the life of it. Let’s try to feel again the atmosphere with this 2018 short interview for Sky TG24 to Gisella Borioli, project leader of Superdesign Show. The event is postponed in exactly a year.

Watch the Sky TG24 video

Is fashion art photography destined to succumb in front of the advance of mobile phone photos or realized for the fast communication of the web? Giovanni Gastel, photographer, artist, poet and number one of artistic fashion and top quality image replies. His photos live on the most important international magazines and in the museums that talk about contemporaneity.

The fashion world and its way of communicating, how will they emerge from this period of world blockage? Certainly it will be necessary to think deeply about the ways and times of fashion communication but also the message of fashion itself will have to change profoundly.
Print media, for a century, the only «communicating voice of fashion» suffers from a deep crisis given by the increasingly modest contribution of advertising. The magazines themselves close their doors as a result of this «a dog chasing its own tail»: no advertising no magazines no advertising. The imagined entry into the communication of the web is struggling to recover because of the terrible lack of poetry that these media convey...

He is the undisputed ambassador of Italian design and style in the world. Architect, designer, curator, he launched many young creatives who have now become international stars. With the Cappellini company he produced iconic pieces, still today "long sellers".

He is the art director of Superdesign Show and curator of SuperCampus who will present at Superstudio during the design week 2021.
Cappellini tells us in video how the Covid emergency has in fact created a new way of imagining and inhabiting space, of living and communicating. Renewed habits, smart working, an unprecedented concept of time that we will find in the SuperCampus project, with the best Italian and international design.

Watch the full video on Superstudio Tweb Youtube channel : youtu.be/nZYy4hCViho 

We gladly resume here the manifesto of the important furniture industry, made in Italy flagship that like fashion, with the pandemic of coronavirus is in a dramatic situation and that needs quick and wise decisions of the Government. Furniture and design, together with fashion, are symbols of the country and the main actors of photographic, trade fair, cultural, communication and events activity of Superstudio. We join them in this appeal.

"Let's reopen Made in Italy": the manifesto of FederlegnoArredo

"Let's reopen Made in Italy": this is the title of the eight-point manifesto drawn up by FederlegnoArredo, published on Saturday 11th April in some of the main Italian newspapers.

With this appeal to the government the Federation, which represents wood and furniture industry, calls for the safety of workers to be safeguarded without compromising even more the survival of an excellence of our country. We will briefly look at these eight points of the Manifesto by FederlegnoArredo.

•  Plan and formalize the reopening date of the entire wood-furniture industry with all its Ateco codes to avoid losing orders and international relations that risk to favor, irremediably, competitors of other currently open countries such as Germany and France... 

Since he created Alchimia, the movement that in the 70s created the counter-design breaking all the rules, has experienced the many facets of the designer’s profession, he wrote, taught, invented, built, designed, helped, entered the museums of half the world and dedicated himself to many initiatives in order to help with art-therapy the weakest, the marginalized, the invisible. In everything he is guided by a strong focus on social. We asked him:

- After this pandemic, what will happen to design?

For a long time many people asked me almost daily what would be the future of design, art, architecture, aesthetics, ethics... To reply I had equipped myself with a glass sphere in front, bought at Ikea, and I must say that since then I was much more believed.
So I said, for example, that we would go from paranoia to schizophrenia, from production to reproduction, from meta-theory to linguistic games, from utopia to heterotopy, from hierarchy to anarchy, from alienation to decentralization, from design to chance, from metropolis to counter-urbanization, from authority to eclecticism, from synthesis to antithesis, from price to no cost. 

While many wonder: but how will our life change "after"? we did not realize that we have already slipped into the uncertainty of tomorrow, anticipating a sea change, years before this happened naturally with all the  predictable  consequences.
If we think that as soon as we enter phase 3 of the emergency, social distancing, face masks, glasses, gloves, disinfectant, lockdown, are words to forget maybe we are hopeless  optimists. At least until a treatment or vaccine has been found for this insidious virus.
What are now annoying tasks have all the aura to became unwelcome habits that should be learned to live with even now. Let's dematerialize, forgetting hugs and kisses, laughter and karaoke, dinners and trips with friends. But also the reassuring visits of the family doctor, the pampering of the hairdresser and the beautician... 

Superstudio has always had an attention for the relationship with customers and suppliers who have often become friends. A feeling that those who frequent Superstudio are well aware of.
This time Superstudio received a tangible sign of affection from a design exhibitor: the Diseno Idea Limited in Hong Kong sent a lot of protective face masks to make sure that our staff did not remain without individual protections.
With the typical practicality of Hong Kong within a few days we were delivered. A gesture that fills our hearts with hope for a future where human relationships are still the most important value. A big "Thank You!" to Hong Kong friends!

Oblong Contemporary Art is the new contemporary art gallery based in Forte dei Marmi and Dubai opened at the end of 2019 by gallery owners Paola Marucci and Emanuela Venturini. International vision, bridge between the West and the Middle East, famous artists, quality works. Among the artists also Flavio Lucchini, president of Superstudio Group, but a refined sculptor from thirty years. For this strange cloistered Easter, the best wishes from friends for whom art is the reason for living.


Watch the full video: youtu.be/60TFsyiKCP8

Dear Giorgio,
I remember like you when fashion, a small and little considered thing in Italy, began to grow and become a beautiful, big, ours, serious thing, which brought into play all hopes and creativity. We have seen it transform and create the made in Italy and we have given it the best. We, Flavio and me and our collaborators, from the magazines we gradually created and directed, Vogue, L'Uomo Vogue, Donna, Mondo Uomo, Moda... You, first with Sergio who we are still missing, and then with all the others your excellent first-time collaborators, Rosanna, Leo, Silvana, Irene, Giovanna and many others. You never stopped. Since you were already appreciated as an assistant of Nino Cerruti, and then from those few rooms in Corso Venezia that saw your first fashion show, to the already important venue in via Durini, up to your empire ...