Ingo maurer floor lamp
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Ingo Maurer
German
1932, Reichenau, Germany
Biography
Ingo Maurer spent his childhood (which coincided with the period between World Wars I and II) on the island of Reichanau in southern Germany. In his early 20s he studied graphic design and emigrated to the U.S., where he worked briefly as a freelance designer in New York City and San Francisco.
In 1963 Maurer returned to Munich and started exploring what he calls the "magical and mystical" properties of light. Three years later, Maurer designed Bulb, a lamp in the form of an oversized, double lightbulb. Though Bulb was designed to be functional, it playfully explored the expressive potential of an object from everyday life. In this regard, Maurer's practice resembles that of Pop artists such as Claes Oldenburg and painter Andy Warhol.
Bare lightbulbs and paper have been recurring elements in Maurer's work. He has created many lamps and chandeliers — some of which have become icons of modern decoration — and designed lighting for fashion designer Issey Miyake's runway shows.
Please note that artwork
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Ingo Maurer
German industrial designer (1932–2019)
Ingo Maurer (12 May 1932 – 21 October 2019) was a German industrial designer who specialised in the design of lamps and light installations. He was nicknamed "poet of light".[1][2]
Life
Maurer was born in Reichenau Island, Lake Constance, Germany,[3] and was the son of a fisherman and grew up there with four siblings. After an apprenticeship as typesetter, he studied graphic design in Munich.[3] In 1960 Maurer left Germany for the U.S., where he worked in New York and San Francisco as a freelance graphic designer, including for IBM.[4] In 1963, he moved back to Germany, founding Design M, a company developing and manufacturing lamps after his own designs.[4] The company was later renamed to "Ingo Maurer GmbH".[3] One of his first designs, the Bulb (1969), was included in the design collection of the Museum of Modern Art in 1969.[3]
In 1984 he presented the low-voltage wire system YaYaHo, consisting of two horizontally fixed m
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Ingo Maurer
As well as the emotive aspect, playfulness and interaction with the end user are also fundamental in Maurer’s design. One only has to think, for the first, of the lamp “Bibbibi” (1982), supported by bright-red stork legs, or - for the second - of objects such as “Hearts Attack” (1997), which offers infinite possibilities for the orientation of the forty-eight moveable hearts, made of synthetic materials and mirrors, of which it is composed.
Alongside the production of lighting, Maurer also began creating a series of installations – which are considered almost artistic performances - for exhibitions, cultural events, underground stations, theatres and even shopping centres, which become opportunities to experiment with the lights in settings which go beyond domestic scale, moving towards urban dimensions. Very often, these projects lead to the design of new lights, which are then put into production. This was the case, for example, with the “XXL Dome” (1999), which was originally studied of the Munich underground.
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