Brian Kish is an expert in Italian 20th Century design. He has organized the first exhibition on Gio Ponti in the US. Brian Kish offers objects and furniture by the most famous Italian Architects of the 20th century.

SELECTED PRESS

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Sotheby’s: March 2011

Sotheby’s: Gio Ponti Conference Table

http://www.sothebys.com/app/live/lot/LotDetail.jsp?lot_id=159655013

LOT 379

GIO PONTI
AN IMPORTANT AND UNIQUE CONFERENCE TABLE FROM THE EIGHTH FLOOR AUDITORIUM, TIME-LIFE BUILDING, NEW YORK

produced by M. Singer and Sons, New York

1959
painted wood and brass
70,000—90,000
USD

CATALOGUE NOTE

This lot is being sold with a certificate of authenticity from the Gio Ponti archives. Sotheby’s would like to thank Brian Kish for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.

Gio Ponti was no stranger to New York, and the great Italian architect completed several commissions there. Following his 1955 interior of the Alitalia ticket offices in the Tishman Building, 666 Fifth Avenue, Ponti was retained in 1959 to construct a state-of-the-art conference center on the 8th floor of the Time-Life Building, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, designed by Wallace Harrison. A breathless critic in Architectural Forum raved “The many-angled Italian cabinetwork, in blond wood, is beyond the capacity of American mechanical civilization.” In fact, the furniture used throughout the space was made by the New York-based Singer and Sons, who had been producing work by Ponti, Carlo Mollino, Ico Parisi and others since 1951. However, the more complex biomorphic forms by Singer were made for them in Italy, and the present table is probably one of these pieces. Ponti’s auditorium was gutted and renovated in 1981.

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Wikipedia: Gio Ponti

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Gi%C3%B2_Ponti

Sherer, Daniel, “Gio Ponti: The Architectonics of Design,” Catalogue Essay for Retrospective Gio Ponti: A Metaphysical World, Queens Museum of Art, curated by Brian Kish, Feb. 15-May 20, 2001, 1-6.

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Food & Wine: October 2000

Rationalist Man

The Italian Rationalists are back, thanks to one passionate collector-turned-dealer with an eye for great modernist design.

Sure, the Scandinavian and American designers of the midcentury knew how to fill a room, but how many Eames chairs and Saarinen tables can a person own? Those with a taste for modernist furniture but not for conformity should turn to the Italians–and to Brian Kish, a sometime Londoner, current New Yorker and longtime Milan watcher. Kish owns a tiny, year-old eponymous gallery in Manhattan’s SoHo that specializes in the work of Italian Rationalists, a band of forward-looking architects obsessed with clean lines who shook up Milan and the rest of the decorative-arts world from the Forties through the Sixties.

Before studying to be an art historian, Kish worked in a contemporary-art gallery in London, where the focus was on “all the latest from Milan,” he says. He eventually moved to New York and spent almost a decade collecting and later dealing privately in midcentury Italian furniture before opening to the public last summer. All the pieces in the gallery were made by postwar Milanese designers, from the dining chairs, credenzas and coffee tables to the silverware, glass decanters and ceramic vases.

Many items, like the octagonal rosewood top of an exquisite tea cart designed by Ico Parisi in 1959, look a lot like Scandinavian objects of the same vintage, but the Italian pieces are more influenced by classical motifs. The octagon, Kish points out, was a favorite form in the Renaissance that was borrowed and adapted by many 20th-century designers. And although most modernists were trying to dispense with the past altogether, “much of Italian modernism,” Kish says, “is about distorting classical forms.”

Kish’s most extensive holdings are by Gio Ponti, Milan’s éminence grise (and the subject of Kish’s next show, which opens in early November). In the 1920s and ’30s, Ponti crafted bulbous ceramic vases as well as one made of bundled silver tubes that looks like a miniature of The Wizard of Oz’s Emerald City. Ponti’s ceramic plates from 1966 have the “super-graphic” look that Kish says “captures some of the chaos of the Sixties.” Kish also owns stately walnut-framed armchairs that Ponti designed for the American manufacturer Singer in 1950 and a sleek, low-slung coffee table dating from 1960.

Among Kish’s other favorites are boldly colored, striped Venini glass bowls from the craft-worshiping architect Carlo Scarpa; ceramic canisters and cylinders designed by a young Ettore Sottsass; and an oak dining table, a sleek rosewood credenza and a metal standing lamp from Franco Albini, whose work is probably the most sought after among all the Rationalists. And with good reason: Albini’s designs reveal amazing craftsmanship. The oak dining table, for instance, is made of pie-shaped sections of polished, grainy oak that have been joined together with incredible precision.

Kish is confident that Italian Rationalist will be the next big design trend, but not as big as the current craze for midcentury Scandinavian and American pieces. “It won’t be as popular, because there’s not the same easy access to the products,” he says. “Italian furniture wasn’t as well distributed in the United States as Scandinavian was. Plus, in Italy, people are still living with these things, so they’re not unloading them.” And there aren’t many places to buy them. “There are few big auctions or flea markets selling this stuff,” Kish says, “so it’s very difficult to acquire. I have sources in Italy who go to estate sales and report back to me.” Then there’s an elaborate, carefully controlled importing process to contend with. All of which limits the supply of Italian Rationalist pieces and, in turn, drives up prices. However, it’s a fairly safe bet that prices aren’t as high now as they will be soon.

(Brian Kish, 27 Greene St., New York City; 212-925-7850)

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Departures: September 2005

Rediscovering Gio Ponti

http://www.departures.com/articles/rediscovering-gio-ponti
By Mark Van De Walle
Sep-2005

The father of modern Italian design finally gets his due.

Asked to pick a period that represents the high point of Gio Ponti’s long career, architect and Harvard design professor Monica Ponce de Leon laughs. “You cannot,” she says. “That’s what is so incredible about Ponti—he is one of the very few designers and architects whose work was great from beginning to end.” Such consistency was no small accomplishment. From the twenties to the seventies, Ponce de Leon points out, Ponti embodied every decade he worked in. “He managed to be totally fashionable and timeless,” she says, “and maintain real integrity in his ideas and vocabulary.”

In 1998 Ponce de Leon cocurated a show of Ponti’s work at Harvard’s Busch-Reisinger Museum, one of the first in the United States since the designer’s death in 1979. At the time, Ponti was appreciated mainly by fellow designers and a few obsessive collectors. Now the rest of the world seems to be discovering the father of modern Italian design. Ponti exhibitions, like those at the Queens Museum of Art in New York in 2001 and the Design Museum in London in 2002, further piqued interest, and the market for his work, from every period and in every medium, is definitely heating up.

That trend was amply demonstrated in April, when Sotheby’s in Milan auctioned off an important collection of Ponti pieces. Highlights included an urn created for the ceramics firm Richard-Ginori sometime after 1925, characterized by a beautiful mix of classical curves and sleek Art Deco lines. The decoration features stylized figures on a tiled plaza, surrounded by vases and architectural models on pedestals. You can already see hints of Ponti’s signature diamond pattern as the tiles spiral to the top of the piece. One of only 30 urns the company produced in this design, it sold for $98,000. At the same sale, a circular burled-walnut coffee table with a diamond grid cutting across the center, made by Ponti in 1935, brought $45,500. Here, again, in the table’s cross-hatch design, you can see the diamond motif that he would update throughout his career.

Chicago auctioneer Richard Wright, whose namesake firm specializes in 20th-century design, says the burgeoning interest in Ponti is only natural. “Whimsy and tough rationalism, the most important themes in modern Italian design, are absolutely embodied by his work,” says Wright. He adds that he is seeing “contemporary art collectors, people who were never interested before, all buying Ponti.”

If Ponti is just now gaining the recognition he deserves, it’s certainly not because of a lack of productivity. In the twenties and thirties he not only designed the streamlined glass-and-metal Milan offices of Montecatini and worked as artistic director for Richard-Ginori but he also founded, edited, and wrote for the respected design magazine Domus. In the forties he designed costumes and sets for the opera and ballet, as well as gleaming chrome espressomakers for La Pavoni. He also started another magazine, Stile. After the war he helped rejuvenate Italian ship travel with a commission to outfit four ocean liners. In the fifties his collaborations with Piero Fornasetti resulted in a series of surreally beautiful residences in Milan, along with interiors for the ill-fated Andrea Doria, which sank in 1956. In addition he built one of the world’s iconic skyscrapers, the Pirelli headquarters in Milan, and the Villa Planchart in Caracas, Venezuela, among the most exquisite houses of the modernist period.

These projects form only a sampling of Ponti’s output. And there might have been more had his wife, Giulia, not rebelled when he brought a drafting table into their bedroom so he could continue working at night instead of wasting a rumored four hours sleeping. Somehow he found time to write, sketch, paint, and mentor an entire generation of designers and architects at the Milan Polytechnic.

Paradoxically, the scope, quality, and sheer volume of Ponti’s designs may have been factors that slowed appreciation of his achievements. Zesty Meyers, co-owner of the New York design gallery R 20th Century, remarks, “Part of the problem has been that there’s so much work—and at such a high level—that it’s almost beyond comprehension. It has taken people years to start getting a handle on it.”

The recent museum shows have served to advance scholarship and, in turn, ignite collector interest. Peter Loughrey, owner of Los Angeles Modern Auctions and himself a Ponti collector, says the market could begin to skyrocket now that “the same people willing to spend a million dollars on a piece by [Emile-Jacques] Ruhlmann are developing an interest in Ponti.”

One point everyone agrees on: Ponti’s unique pieces are the most coveted. They aren’t easy to find, though. So what else to look for? His furniture and ceramics from the twenties and thirties combined neoclassical style, luxurious materials, and the finest craftsmanship. In the late forties and early fifties, he shifted between clean-lined modernism and funkier collaborations, creating furniture that shows the master at his peak.

While Ponti’s prices are rising, his work remains relatively affordable in the red-hot modern design market, where seven-figure sums no longer seem far-fetched. In June, Christie’s sold a table by Ponti’s friend Carlo Mollino for a staggering $3.8 million. That result may be, as many believe, a case of auction fever. But there’s no question: Ponti looks seriously undervalued by comparison.

 

Mass Appeal

One thing that distinguishes Ponti, says independent curator Marco Romanelli, is that he worked in two scales, devoting “the same passion” to designing for manufacturers as he did to his one-off custom pieces. Not surprisingly, mass-produced examples tend to be far less expensive than unique commissions. A vintage set of eight of the famed SUPERLEGGERA CHAIRS—which Cassina has made since 1957—recently sold for $12,500. And you can find Ponti’s charming 1930 textile design I MOROSI ALLA FINESTRA, recently rereleased by Maharam fabrics, for $120 per yard.

 

Who to Know

BRIAN KISH Gallerist, New York; 212-925-7850; www.briankish.com

 

Which Ponti Do You Prefer?

The designer’s career can be broken down more or less into distinct periods, each marked by an evolutionary leap in style. Unsurprisingly, everyone has a favorite. For New York dealer Fred Silberman, it’s the PREWAR PERIOD. That was when Ponti blended NEOCLASSICAL MOTIFS—elongated figures on ceramics, details on furniture that echoed arches—with materials such as burled walnut and marble. At the top end of the market, a pair of walnut and mirror cabinets crafted for a private residence in 1929 went for $128,000 at Sotheby’s April sale in Milan. To Los Angeles Modern Auctions director Peter Loughrey, Ponti’s work from the FIFTIES is the strongest. “It was the first time in his career that he had clients who allowed him to do absolutely what he wanted,” Loughrey says. During these years, Ponti took what he had done before and made it fresh. He used burled walnut to create SCULPTURAL FURNITURE and embellished some of his pieces with Piero Fornasetti’s SURREALIST DESIGNS. One example, a custom headboard from 1950, brought $32,000 at a Wright auction in Chicago in 2003. Brian Kish, curator of the Queens Museum of Art retrospective and owner of the eponymous New York gallery, is most interested in pieces from the SIXTIES and SEVENTIES, when the designer turned to curved ORGANIC SHAPES and ABSTRACT PATTERNS. Observes Kish, “His work from this period has been widely overlooked.”

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The New York Times: November 2009 (Pier Luigi Colli)

Art Review | ‘Modernism + Art20′ A One-Stop Eyeful of Mediums

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/arts/design/13modernism.html
November 13, 2009

By ROBERTA SMITH

Which is better: a mediocre work of art or an outstanding design object? This question buzzes about Modernism + Art20, the new two-in-one art and design fair at the Park Avenue Armory through Monday. An answer never emerges, possibly because there really isn’t one, and therein lies some of the fun of this hybrid show.

As the title suggests, this event combines Modernism, the venerable design fair that has convened annually at the armory since 1985, with Art20, a fair of 20th-century art also held there since its inception in 2002. Their union reflects another contraction brought on by the changed economic climate.

This may be to our advantage. “Art Meets Design” is the tag line, and though art and design have had met regularly in all kinds of fairs for years now, they do so with a particular clarity here. For the most part, stands devoted to painting and sculpture alternate with others dominated by furniture and decorative objects. Although the resulting mashup includes some extremely vapid or simply inappropriate offerings (bad contemporary realism and vintage clothing, for example), this arrangement definitely staves off the monotony that can afflict any fair.

[...]

Although postwar modern is in the majority, Art Deco holds sway at Moderne’s stand, exemplified by a 1930 cabinet in burl elm with chunky ivory mountings by Louis Neiss. Leroux has an appealing pair of small cabinets, also Deco, partly covered in parchment. Brian Kish has a lavish stained oak and leather credenza from 1934 by Pier Luigi Colli. At J. Lohmann a tea set by Werner Gothein has the lines and mottled burnt orange glaze of postwar design though it is from 1927. Martin Cohen, a first-time participant, backs up a bit more with a marvelous display of chairs by Louis Comfort Tiffany, Lockwood de Forest and Herter Brothers.

Modernism + Art20 is at the Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue, at 67th Street, on Friday from noon to 8 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday from noon to 7 p.m.; and Monday from noon to 5 p.m. Admission is $20 a day or $30 for a two-day pass; (212) 777-5218 or sanfordsmith.com.

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The New York Times: May 15, 2008

For the Moment | Felix Burrichter Plays House

(Photo: Kenneth Pietrobono)

This week’s guest blogger is Felix Burrichter, a New York-based architect. Burrichter, who was born in Germany, is also the founder and editor of PIN-UP, an independent biannual magazine launched in the fall of 2006, whose unlikely editorial foundations are architecture and sex. To read all of Felix Burrichter’s previous blog posts, click here.

Buying furniture is a very personal affair — perhaps not as momentous as buying a house, but more significant than, say, buying a cute new summer outfit, and can thus be far more difficult. Given that the 20th International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York kicks off this weekend, I thought it would be fitting to share five of my favorite furniture and design stores or galleries in the city.

[...]

Brian Kish
Brian Kish’s very personal gallery space specializes mostly in furniture designs by Italian architects from the 1930s to the 1970s. With his academic credentials (and international accent) attained at the venerable Courtauld Institute of Art, the pedigreed Kish takes an architecture historian’s approach to his collection and is known to have a hard time letting go of some pieces. His current favorites are a marble table by Ico Parisi (no known relation to Heather) and a pendant lamp by Carlo Scarpa, an architect I admire who also designed the beautiful Brion-Vega cemetery near Treviso, in Italy. Below is a clip from a 1971 TV special with Carlo Scarpa, in which he explains his design for the cemetery to the Italian journalist Maurizio Cascavilla (sorry, no subtitles —but it’s beautiful to watch nonetheless).

Bench from the Perished Collection, by Studio Job.

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The New York Times: October 6, 2006

Art in Review

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/arts/design/06gall.html”

by Roberta Smith.
Published: October 6, 2006.

INTERNATIONAL ART & DESIGN FAIR
The Seventh Regiment Armory
Park Avenue at 67th Street

“For single-object encounters, you can end with three ducks in a row: Mr. Ponti’s rearing, helmetlike orange-and-white Proteo lamp at Brian Kish;”

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Metropolis Mag: May 2003

Mid-Century Italian Design

By Debra Pickrel

The Metropolis team was lured across the street from USM by the Gio Ponti chair in Brian Kish’s gallery. “The collection is Italian mid-century, but by Milanese architects. We offer an edited version of the most significant forms and types,” Kish says.