Nanda Vigo (1936-2020) - Electric Light Project

Nanda Vigo, Electric Light Project. 1971. Original silkscreen. Sheet 50 x 50 cm. Hand-signed by the artist and numbered 183/250. Dry stamp Il Segnapassi Pesaro. One of the very few graphics created by the artist. A halo in one corner (see photo). Auction without reserve! Group 0 Piero Manzoni Lucio Fontana

Fernanda Enrica Leonia Vigo, known as Nanda Vigo[1] (Milan, November 14, 1936 – Milan, May 16, 2020), was an Italian designer.

Biography

"Alternative Museum Remo Brindisi", exterior

"Alternative Museum Remo Brindisi", interior

"Alternative Museum Remo Brindisi", interior

"Alternative Museum Remo Brindisi", interior

"Alternative Museum Remo Brindisi", interior
According to the genealogy she herself wrote, on her mother's side she descended from famous artists, namely Cesare Carnesecchi Coppini, choreographer and director of the ballet school at La Scala in Milan, and the famous tenor Enrico Barbacini. On her father’s side, from an ancient family of Spanish origin, industrialists. An restless girl was brought up by her grandmother Ida Cidonia Carnesecchi Coppini (... "In short, Grandma Cidonia was the whole family to me. She was certainly strict; at twenty I had to be home by midnight, or else she would wait for me standing with a broom in hand, but she was also the only person who allowed space for my desire to work in art.")

After completing studies in her hometown at the Liceo Artistico delle Orsoline di via Lanzone[2], she attended the Institut Polytechnique in Lausanne. She opened her first studio in 1959, later working between Milan and East Africa.[3]

As an architect she designed, with others, the Rozzano cemetery; by herself she signed the project of Remo Brindisi’s house-museum at Lido di Spina, inaugurated in 1973. She worked with Gio Ponti on the House under the Leaf in Malo (Vicenza) and with Lucio Fontana. She was a regular visitor to the Milan avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s.

As early as 1971 she won the New York Industrial Design Award and in 1976 the Saint Gobain Prize for design; while in 1982 she participated in the XL Venice Biennale. Following a long career, in 2013 her works entered the permanent collection of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.[4] In 2014 she exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in the retrospective dedicated to the Zero Group.[5]

In 2018 she organized in the Church of San Celso in Milan an exhibition-event titled Global Chronotopic Experience, with the aim of reviving a Chronotypic Environment in stainless steel and Perspex, similar to the one created by the artist in 1967 at the Galleria Apollinaire in Milan.[6][7] A clever combination of neon geometries with reflective materials and “light amplifiers” was again the focus of the exhibition at Palazzo Reale of Milan, curated by Marco Meneguzzo in her honor, in the summer of 2019.[8][9]

She died on May 16, 2020 at the age of 83. Her ashes were interred in a small tomb at the Bruzzano cemetery.[10]

Her private collection, comprising as many as 108 works donated by her, is today part of the permanent exhibition path of the Museo San Fedele in Milan.[11]

Works
1964 - Chronotipic Labyrinth at the Rome Quadriennale
1982 - Exterior for Artventure at the Venice Biennale, at the Magazzini del Sale
1983 - Light progression
1983 - Light tree
1985 - Sun & Island at the Bari Special Gallery
1993 - Light Progression Enviroment
1993 - Fly Away for Biasi Emilio & Figli, Verona
2005 - Goral
2005 - Base Line Totem
2018 - Global Chronotipic Experience

Exhibitions
2014 - ZERO: Countdown to Tomorrow, 1950s–60s, Guggenheim Museum, New York
2018 - Global Chronotipic Experience, Church of San Celso, Milan

Awards and recognitions
1971 - New York Industrial Design Award, for the Golden Gate lamp
1976 - Saint Gobain Prize for design
2020 - Compasso d’oro career