100+1 / Alberto Rosselli for Saporiti Italia

ADI Design Museum, Milano
October 7th – 30th 2022

The 100+1 Exhibition, organised at ADI Design Museum in Milan, from October 7th to 30th 2022 presents, 101 years after his birth, the work of Mr. Alberto Rosselli, one of the masters of contemporary design, through his enduring, prolific relationship with Saporiti Italia, the company founded in 1948 by Sergio Saporiti, where the Mr. Rosselli held the position of art director from 1966 to 1976.

The exhibition takes its name from the presentation of 100 Jumbo chairs, one of the most original and interesting objects designed by Alberto Rosselli for Saporiti, The one hundred and first piece of the exhibition title is a Moby Dick chaise longue, a real icon of Italian design, also designed by Rosselli for Saporiti in 1968.

The exhibition is organized inside ADI Design Museum in Milan, to recall that institution ,ADI / The Association on Industrial Design of Italy, of which Alberto Rosselli was one of the founders in 1956 together with Gillo Dorfles, Ignazio Gardella, Vico Magistretti, Bruno Munari, Angelo Mangiarotti, Marcello Nizzoli, Antonio Pellizzari, Enrico Peressutti, Giulio Castelli, Albe Steiner and Gio Ponti, with whom Rosselli had also created prestigious Compasso d’Oro award in 1954.

Conceived as a non-monographic retrospective, the exhibition focuses on the concept of modernity that has permeated Rosselli’s work, thanks to the encounter with Mr. Sergio Saporiti, starting from the intuition of experimenting the use of plastics and of materials and technologies non-typical of the furniture industry, which have allowed Saporiti Italia to create objects with surprising shapes and functions, completely revolutionary for those times and still absolutely contemporary today.

The central  element of the exhibition is a large and spectacular glass bookcase that hosts 100 Jumbo chairs in 100 different colors, chosen by ten international architectural firms – Massimiliano & Doriana Fuksas, Marti Guixé, Toshiyuki Kita, Mauro Lipparini, Park Associati, Portman Architects, SITE James Wines, storagemilano, S20M Antonio Ventimiglia, Carlos Zapata – and one original white Moby Dick chaise longue.