Galleria Giustini / Stagetti presents the exhibition “Genazzi. Oggetti in Argento, 1930-1960”,dedicated to the research conducted by the Milanese manufacturing company of Luigi and Eros Genazzi, through a selection of works that testify to the evolution of the forms and the experimental techniques in the construction of the pieces as well as in the treatment of their surfaces.

 

The two silversmiths, father and son, are among the leaders of a stylistic renewal that involved an entire artisan tradition, giving life to one of the most coherent and refined episodes in the affirmation of modern taste, contributing to the construction of some of the first and most significant meeting points of the history of the Decorative Arts of the Italian 20th century and that of Industrial Design.

 

After an initial phase which saw him busy as an engraver and medalist, Luigi took up the profession of silversmith and chiseler, distinguishing himself in the panorama of the highest quality of Lombard craftsmanship already in the mid-1920s, known for the elegance of his rigorous lines and precision of applications and decorative motifs.In 1929 his son Eros joined the company in the role of designer and in the creation of the Genazzi family’s “Laboratorio Artistico Industriale di Cesello, Incisione e Argenteria” in Milan, whose signature will be the unmistakable leaf-shaped stamp, beginning in 1933, of a stylized clover. Here begins the story of the intense synergy between father and son, also characterized by numerous collaborations with authors such as Gio Ponti, Giuseppe Pagano, Corrado Corradi dell’Acqua, and Ignazio Gardella.

 

The result is an avant-garde production, which lasted until the 1960s, whose success was due to an unprecedented interpretation of traditional silver working, in which the mastery of the elegance of deco models and a refined, clear, and fundamental 20th century vocabulary converge. For the occasion of the exhibition, organized in collaboration with Galleria Luciano Colantonio in Brescia, a catalog will be published with a critical essay by Valerio Terraroli, the result of which is achronological and stylistic definition of this specific production.