Giancarlo Mattioli

Born in 1933 in Bologna and was an Italian designer, architect, urban planner, portrait painter, man and intellectual, who achieved success in 1950s and 1960s. He graduated in architecture in Florence and, in 1961, founded the Urban Architects Group "Città Nuova", alongwith Pierluigi Cervellati, Umberto Maccaferri, Franco Morelli, Gianpaolo Mazzucato and Mario Zaffagnini. In 1965 he took part, with the Urban Architects Group "Città Nuova" in the competition "Studio Artemide Domus di Milan", through which Artemide and Editrice Domus wanted to discover new ways of conceiving the lamp as a lighting object.The submitted project was a lamp inspired by the shape of a jellyfish, where Mattioli and the Group’s professionals worked on new ways to obtain a subdued environmental light by using an appliance aimed at concealing the light bulb. The project was the winner and the lamp was produced from 1967 with the name Nesso. It then became an emblematic icon of those years and had a long-term fortune, as evidenced by the fact that it is still part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York.