Designers Arduino Cantàfora

Arduino Cantàfora was born in Milan in 1945. From a very young age he nurtured a curiosity for organic forms, anatomy and entomology, passions that remained alive throughout his architectural studies. He discovered very early the language of drawing, which became his privileged tool for capturing forms. Cantafora begun his career as a painter by tackling the thorny technical challenge of oil painting, becoming a copyist of Caravaggio. From that moment, the craftmanship and artisanal pleasure of painting would never abandon him.
While studying architecture at Politecnico di Milan, he perfected the pictorial representation of the architecture of historical cities. His interpretations revolve around shadow and light, in a faithfully Caravaggesque inspiration. The skills he matured in these years will be invaluable during his collaboration with architect Aldo Rossi (1973-1978), but they will also influence his future work, dominated by the translation of architecture into painting. In 1973, Cantafora exhibited La Città analoga at the Milan Triennale, a large-scale painting now owned by Museo del Novecento in Milan. This painting became the manifesto of La Tendenza, an architectural movement that reintegrates elements of 20th-century European Rationalism by emphasizing the history of places as central to projects. In 2012, La Tendenza was the subject of a retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Cantafora participated again in the Milan Triennale in 1981 and 1988. He also took part in the Biennale di Architettura in Venice in 1978 and 1980, and in the Biennale d’Arte in 1984. Between 1985 and 1986, he was in Berlin at the invitiation of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). The city inspired him to create a series of paintings that were exhibited at the Martin-Gropius-Bau Museum in Berlin. Two large canvases, Das Andere Berlin, 1984 have been acquired in 2006 by the National Museum of Modern Art (MNAM) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. These two paintings are part of the 89 works by Cantafora in the collection of the museum. During the 1990s, Cantafora conceived several set designs for La Scala in Milan and for other prestigious venues such as the Aix-en-Provence Festival. His work as a set designer earned him the second place of the Ubu Prize, Italy’s most important theatre award. Tra il 2022 e il 2023, è invitato a due importanti mostre pubbliche: “Architectures impossibles” al Musée des Beaux-arts di Nancy e “Un tiempo propio” al Centre Pompidou di Malaga, dove sono esposte due grandi tele berlinesi della collezione del Centro Pompidou di Parigi.
Arduino Cantàfora è stato professore di architettura all’Università di Venezia (IUAV) dal 1982 al 1986, all’Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio (AAM) dal 1998 al 2011 e “visiting professor” alla Yale University nel 1988. In 1989 he was appointed full professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where he was chairman of the Department of Visual Representation. He is honorary professor at EPFL since 2011. He is the author of several publications on architecture and education, as well as an autobiographical novel and short stories published by Einaudi.