Gio Ponti Le Navi

Gio Ponti, a key figure in 20th Century Italian design and architecture, worked with interior designer Nino Zoncada on some of the greatest Italian ocean liners of the 1950s. Their elegant modern interiors helped rebuild Italy's image after the Second World War and took the idea of Italian style all over the world. The liners Conte Grande, Conte Biancamano, Giulio Cesare, and Andrea Doria sailed between Italy and the Americas, and the Oceania and Africa with the far East and Africa, taking Italian design to foreign countries and presenting the work of great artists like Massimo Campigli, Fausto Melotti, Salvatore Fiume, and artisans like Paolo De Poli, Piero Fornasetti and Paolo Venini. But after only twenty years these fine ships were made obsolete by air travel. Until now that short-lived but fashionable period has been overlooked by historians of design. In this new book Paolo Piccione fills the gap by exploring how these ship interiors were created in a scholarly and fascinating account of that brief interlude in Italian design, the creative arts, and in the work of Gio Ponti. With over 200 illustrations, many of them never published until now, this book brings to light a hitherto unknown aspect of 1950s Italian design.