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Go to shop4 December 2024
The Italian designer but New Yorker by adoption designs for Cassina two sofas and a screen inspired by the American metropolis.
Tramonto (Sunset) a New York is one of the manifestos of life and creativity of Gaetano Pesce, who passed away last April in the American metropolis, his adopted city. Born in La Spezia, Italy, in 1939, Pesce graduated in architecture in Venice and since the 1970s has spent a good part of his time in New York where he moved permanently in 1983.
From here he continues his design path devoted to radical design and crossed by the idea that furniture has not only a functional but also a narrative meaning. This principle emerges in all its fullness in the Tramonto a New York sofa, published by Cassina since its debut in 1980.
The meeting between the designer and the company took place in 1964 and offered Pesce room for experimentation, while remaining within the scope of industrial production and not art in the strict sense. There is a perfect balance between these two needs: expressiveness and functional reason that in this sofa is expressed in a suggestive but also credible way.
Gaetano Pesce chooses the theme of the sunset almost to underline a moment of decadence in New York, the red of the sun that acts as a backrest, is a final explosion of energy, tempered by the blue gray of the skyscrapers, depicted thanks to the jacquard workmanship of the fabric, dotted with windows. The round and generous shapes invite relaxation even just visually and in the current version, the structure has been redesigned with a view to sustainability and ergonomics, without compromising its initial philosophy and proportions. It is a one-of-a-kind sofa sculpture, balanced between irony and design depth, just like all the designer’s creations.
In 2022, the Tramonto a New York also takes shape in the screen, the ideal second element of this series. A vertical piece of furniture on which skyscrapers are depicted in different colors dominated by the red sun, just like in the sofa.
The polychromy recalls the thousand lights of the New York night and overall, the screen is lively and playful, as if the sunset were no longer a moment of decadence but of bright rebirth. And it is a piece of furniture that is appreciated today because it offers the possibility not only to decorate and stylistically enrich the environment but also to remodel it by creating corners of privacy in a flexible and temporary way.
The iconic skyline returns in the 2024 project Notturno (by night) a New York, also produced by Cassina: a sofa that evokes the initial idea by declining it in a nocturnal key.
After all, night is one of the highlights of the American metropolis, the city that never sleeps and that under the light of the stars, signs and skyscrapers, dresses itself in an unusual magic. Which is expressed in an enchanting way in the cushions, on which the skyscrapers come to life and in the backrest that, if in Tramonto took shape as a red sun, in Notturno becomes a full moon with craters and all the shades of the night light.
