Genesio
Design Alik Cavaliere, 1990
Furniture as sculptures and stories. Creations designed by Alik Cavaliere have an unmistakeable mark in art as in design. The role of decoration is central: wooden inlay work, smelted metal and lacquered images. This Roman artist who became Milanese by adoption (for 30 years, he taught sculpture at the Academy of Brera, where he was also the director) was also a design alchemist. He used metals, bronzes, porcelain and glass and experimented with enamels, rare pigments and even gold. He worked from memory by soldering, smelting and assembling. “I always used materials like a director does, like a theatrical property man or the narrator of stories and tales.” Cavaliere has created 3 show pieces for Zanotta Editions: Alicante (Alik-ante), a bedroom piece of furniture on the surface of which a large tree encounters (and perhaps falls desperately in love with) a flower, the chest of drawers Genesio with bronze handles representing the mystery of the Genesis, and the headboard Geotropa like a picture with a golden frame.
