Richard Sapper began his career as a designer in the styling department of Mercedes Benz in Stuttgart before moving to Milan in 1958 where he worked with the architect Gio Ponti and in the design division of “La Rinascente”.
In the early 1960s Sapper began collaborating with the Italian architect Marco Zanuso. Renowned for their aesthetic of sculptural minimalism, they developed a series of televisions and radios for Brionvega, the lightweight K1340 stacking children's chair for Kartell and the compact folding Grillo telephone for Siemens/Italtel.
In 1959, when he founded his independent studio, Sapper designed the static clock for Lorenz, which won him the first Compasso d'Oro award in 1960. Sapper continued to create design classics including the Tizio lamp for Artemide in 1972, one of the first table lamps using halogen bulbs with low-voltage current-conducting arms eliminating the need for wires. With its essential and linear form and dynamic functionality the Tizio immediately became an icon, a true design masterpiece. It remains one of the best-selling lamps ever produced to date and is in the Permanent Design Collection of the Museum of Modern Art (NY).
Richard Sapper has received numerous awards for his products and his designs are represented in the permanent collections of many museums internationally. In 2012 Sapper received the Merit Cross of the Order of Merit by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2014 he received the Compasso d'Oro Lifetime Achievement Award from the Associazione Design Industriale ADI.
