The 2023 Color Award of the “Gruppo del Colore-Associazione Italiana Colore” was unanimously given to Gaetano Pesce.

Gaetano Pesce is a versatile intellectual: architect, urban planner, interior designer, film director, artist.

He was born in La Spezia in 1939, he studied architecture at the University of Venice.

He is an eccentric and eclectic exponent of radical design.

He has been lecturer in prestigious universities: Strasbourg – France, Pittsburgh – USA, Milan, Hong Kong, Sao Paulo – Brazil and New York City – USA.

He has lived in Venice, London, Helsinki and Paris and has lived in New York since the early 1980s.

He once stated: “I am convinced that an innovation is perpetrated through three means: innovation of language, technical innovation and the use of new materials. As soon as these three factors are respected, innovation exists. A creator must therefore express himself with the materials of his time to be sincere”.

His objects, decidedly material, take on bizarre and unpredictable aspects, in which color is altogether with the materials, often soft, light and transformable to the touch and in motion – such as resins, polyurethane, elastomer and silicone – dyed in mass, which make up tables, armchairs, chairs, stools, lamps, beds, chests of drawers, jewellery, accessories, floors, works of art. They are multi-colored and elastic plastics that allow him maximum creative freedom, continuous transformations and diversity from one piece to another. In fact, although the pieces are industrially produced, and therefore serial, each one is a unique and unrepeatable specimen according to the casting and mixing of the colored plastics in the molding.

In awarding the 2023 Color Award, we found it very interesting that in Pesce’s work color becomes matter, is one with matter. His chromatic research transcends the boundaries of geometry, of measurement, to arrive at randomness. It is used in iconic and provocative works, beyond the schemes, where defect or error become virtues and where ‘random’ color opposes to the dogmatic, monolithic and totalitarian dictatorship of the obsession for beauty and absolute perfection.

Talking about his colorful New York studio where color is the interpreter of a fantastic chromatic chaos, Gaetano Pesce states: “Color was deposited like that, a bit as it came, making it the first interpreter of that space”.

His work can be found in more than 30 permanent collections of the world’s most important museums, and he has received numerous Lifetime Achievement Awards and an Honorable Mention at the Locarno Film Festival. Numerous articles and books have been dedicated to him.