"Serpente" Lamp
During the 1960s, lighting design entered a new phase of artistic expression and technological innovation. Reflecting prevailing pop culture aesthetics and responding to a more affluent and assertive youth market, designers like Elio Martinelli experimented with form, new materials, and cheaper production methods. Amidst booming post-war economic growth, these designs challenged the rational severity of International Style modernism and emphasized expressive elements such as lighting shades and casing, embracing the creative possibilities of plastics to explore the more sculptural aspects of lighting design. Italy provided a particularly fertile ground for this experimentation, thanks to the craft-based nature of many of its factories, which allowed manufacturers to be more responsive to designers, and to calibrate production quality more effectively. This lamp’s name, Serpente, refers to the snake-like form of the main supporting arm. It stretches upwards from the base to connect with, and embed itself into, a large bulbous plastic shade, which creates a diffuse glow upwards but a more concentrated light below for reading and other tasks. The upper arm of the lamp is equipped with an adjustable swivel hinge, designed to move 360 degrees, thus conveying further the sense of a twisted form. Like many of Martinelli’s designs, Serpente combines a distillation of geometric shapes, with a sense of wit, play, and irony–qualities inherent in several other examples of Italian design from the 1960s.
Artwork Details
- Title: "Serpente" Lamp
- Designer: Elio Martinelli (Italian, Lucca 1922–2004)
- Manufacturer: Martinelli Luce S.p.A. (Italian, Tuscany, founded 1960)
- Date: 1965
- Medium: Painted metal, methacrylate
- Dimensions: 18 1/2 × 17 11/16 × 18 1/8 in., 18.8 lb. (47 × 45 × 46 cm, 8.5 kg)
- Classification: Lighting
- Credit Line: Gift of Martinelli Luce S.p.A., 1989
- Object Number: 2022.135
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art
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