Vico Magistretti and his obsession with chairs

You have until 26 February 2026 to visit “More or less 60 chairs in 60 years” at the Vico Magistretti Foundation Studio Museum, in Via Vincenzo Bellini 1, Milan. A journey that clearly and deeply narrates Vico Magistretti’s declared passion for the chair. As he himself admitted in a 2003 interview: “I have a somewhat shameful passion for chairs. I think it’s because it’s the most difficult object — it forgives nothing. It’s hard to be satisfied with a chair.” That this borders on obsession is well known. Already in 1980, from an idea by his friend Enrico Baleri, Magistretti organised a solo exhibition at Studio Marconi in Milan titled “Twenty years, twenty chairs.” A simple and effective title, which was reproduced the following year in London for Designers’ Saturday, with a slight twist: “Twenty-one years, twenty-one chairs.” Today the Foundation revives and expands that spirit with “More or less 60 chairs in 60 years.”


@ Sebastiano Maielli

The exhibition draws from that earlier experience, but above all — as always — from the archives of the Magistretti Studio. The curator, Luca Poncellini, worked extensively on it: he read and reread letters, drafts, faxes, press kits; he consulted patent files, photographs of prototypes and models; he studied drawings and deciphered notes. A meticulous effort that allowed him to reconstruct the design lines that run throughout Magistretti’s career: concept design, the redesign of tradition, autobiographical cues. All told through a single typology: the chair.
 

The exhibition path unfolds in two sections. The first is a timeline composed of original drawings and photographic reproductions of the more than sixty chairs Magistretti designed — sixty-six, to be precise — too many to fit in the studio museum’s space. The second presents a dozen chairs to actually sit on and try out, accompanied by notebooks recounting the stories behind each project: insights, collaborations, modifications, rethinks, production challenges and even a few legal mishaps. “More or less 60 chairs in 60 years” is not just an exhibition: it is an invitation to sit down — literally — and read. Each chair tells its own story, and together they reveal the vision of an enlightened and refined designer who left an indelible mark on Italian and international design.

Guided tour ticket: €5 - RESERVATION REQUIRED HERE