Joe Colombo
During the postwar in Milan – in a city full of ruins, but also of desire for rebirth – a number of nightclubs reopens. One in particular, the Santa Tecla, attracts an audience of artists and designers who love Jazz: these figures will greatly contribute to the socio-cultural renaissance of Milan. In the same historical period, the Rinascente represents an extraordinary example of a place where innovation is expressed and takes shape through the production of innovative objects, designed by young creatives. They also love Jazz, and would hang out at the famed Santa Tecla. Among these, there was also the young Joe Colombo who, together with Corsini/Wiskemann, Ornella Noorda, Mario Bellini, Guido Crepax, Mario Cristiani and Enzo Mari, was involved in a completely new project. The group had the opportunity of creating pieces of furniture made of laminate by the Abet Laminati company, and they had free rein with regard to themes to be developed.
The result achieved emphasized the extraordinary visionary power of the group. An innovative movement which influenced the taste of the moment, at a time when social transformations were leading to new ways of living the house interiors. All these talented young artists deeply love Jazz, to the extent that Joe Colombo himself devised the interiors of the Santa Tecla, by designing its furniture and artistic set-up while his friend Enrico Baj made it unique with paintings. Jazz had the power to express the spirit of a new era and, at the same, the power animating young designers. Happiness, joy, rhythm, color. These are all elements characterizing both Jazz music and Joe Colombo’s work. According to Gillo Dofles, Colombo’s works are always extremely vital, extremely free, while being perfectly successful from a design point of view. Joe Colombo’s work is unparalleled in Italy as well as in the rest of the world, for it is able to reconnect his genius to a very simple concept of humanity. And Jazz too is capable of expressing the same connection in an authentic and immediate way.
