Exhibition, 16 January 2026 – 10 May 2026, The Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London
An Artist’s Reflection by Natalia Giacomino
There are designers who shape objects, and there are those who reshape perception itself. Alessandro Mendini belongs decisively to the latter. His work is not contained within the boundaries of design, architecture, or art, it exists in a continuous state of emotional provocation, where colour becomes language and ornament becomes thought.
Born in Milan, Alessandro Mendini (1931-2019) was an architect, designer, artist, critic and journalist. He was a major theoretician and promoter of renewal in Italian design. He edited the renowned magazines Casabella, Modo and Domus and created objects, furniture, interiors, installations, paintings and architecture.
He received three Compasso d’Oro design awards in Italy and in France he was awarded the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.
Photo: Ambrogio Beretta, Archivio Alessandro Mendini
For me, encountering Mendini’s world has never been a passive experience. It is always a shock of recognition, as if colour itself has been reintroduced as something urgent, intellectual, and deeply human.
Photo Credit: Natalia Giacomino
Colour as Emotional Architecture
Mendini does not treat colour as surface. He treats it as structure.
In his work, colour is never decorative excess; it is the very condition through which form is understood. A chair is not simply a chair. It becomes a psychological object, charged with irony, memory, and tension. A façade is not a skin, but a field of emotional vibration.
Proust Armchair, 1978. Photo: Carlo Lavatori, Archivio Alessandro Mendini
What fascinates me most is his refusal of neutrality. In Mendini’s universe, neutrality does not exist. Every hue carries intention. Every contrast is a decision about how we feel, not just how we see.
This has profoundly influenced my own thinking as both an artist and an architect: the idea that colour is not applied at the end of a process, but is present from the very beginning, shaping structure, atmosphere, and emotional narrative simultaneously.
The Radical Innocence of Ornament
Mendini reclaims ornament at a moment in history when it was meant to disappear. In doing so, he challenges one of modernism’s most rigid assumptions: that meaning should be stripped away in favour of purity.
Photo Credit: Natalia Giacomino
But Mendini’s ornament is never nostalgic. It is not a return to decoration as tradition. It is something far more radical, a form of visual joy that is aware of its own absurdity. His work understands that playfulness can be intellectual, and that irony can carry emotional depth.
This tension, between seriousness and play, is where his genius lies.
Anna G . and Alessandro M., 2003 ‘Proust’ Alessi, project with Annalisa Margarini. Alessi Photographic Archive
For me, as an artist, this opened a critical space: the permission to embrace complexity without resolution, to allow contradiction to coexist without forcing harmony.
Colour as Memory and Disruption
Mendini’s use of colour is not random; it is deeply psychological. His palettes often feel like fractured memories, unexpected combinations that evoke familiarity and estrangement at the same time.
There is always a sense of disruption. A pink that should not sit next to a deep blue. A pattern that resists hierarchy. A surface that refuses to settle into one reading.
This instability is what makes his work alive.
It reminds me that colour is never neutral. It carries cultural memory, emotional residue, and personal association. When placed in tension, it becomes a form of storytelling that bypasses logic and speaks directly to sensation.
The Emotional Object
Perhaps Mendini’s greatest contribution is his ability to make objects emotional again.
In his world, design is not about efficiency or silence. It is about presence. A chair becomes something that looks back at you. A surface insists on being noticed. A building refuses to disappear into its function.
This idea has deeply influenced my own practice at Natalia Giacomino Architects, the belief that architecture and art must be emotionally active. They must do more than perform; they must affect.
Mendini teaches us that intensity is not excess. It is honesty.
My Practice and the Legacy of Colour
As an artist and architect, I often return to Mendini when thinking about how colour can construct space rather than simply decorate it. His work has given me the courage to treat colour as structural force, capable of shaping rhythm, perception, and spatial emotion.
In my own practice, I find myself asking:
What happens when colour becomes architecture?
What happens when it refuses to sit still on a surface and instead begins to define the experience of space itself?
These questions are not theoretical. They are sensory. They are about how a body moves through space, how memory is triggered by tone, how emotion is shaped before language can intervene.
The Freedom of Not Resolving in Art
Mendini never resolves. And perhaps that is his most radical gesture.
He leaves us in a state of productive tension, between irony and sincerity, structure and play, object and emotion. In that space, colour becomes more than visual material; it becomes a form of freedom.
For me, his work is a reminder that architecture and art do not need to be silent to be serious. They can be loud, contradictory, joyful, and still profoundly intelligent.
And in that possibility lies a freedom that continues to shape my work every day.
Visit the exhibition at The Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art
39a Canonbury Square, London N1 2AN, the closest Tube station is Highbury & Islington.
The Estorick Collection opened 2026 with the UK’s first solo exhibition dedicated to Alessandro Mendini, one of post-war Italy’s most creative and influential designers and architects. Bringing together around 50 key works – from furniture and drawings to paintings, rugs and design objects – the show celebrates Mendini’s playful and poetic approach to design across his extraordinary career and through his iconic collaborations with companies such as Alessi, Venini and Swatch.
