Exhibition
ELEONORE PEDUZZI RIVA:
DESIGNER, ARCHITETTO E CONSULENTE
7 September – 10 November 2024
Staged by Matylda Krzykowski (Curation & Spatial Design)
Kunst Raum Riehen, Switzerland
Opening:
Friday 6 September 2024, 6 PM
Conversation with EPR & MK & Ariana Pradal
Thursday 10 October 2024, 6 PM
Guided Tours:
Sunday 8 September & Sunday 10 November, 2 PM
She didn’t want to see the world through dark rectangles therefore she designed a pair of big, white, round glasses. People continue to recognize her via her glasses today. She continues to drinks around 10 espresso a day and knows exactly when it is 6 pm: the moment in the afternoon when she smokes her first cigarette. Previously she had no time because of work.
In 2023 Eleonore Peduzzi Riva received the Swiss Grand Prix in Design. With a tip from Luiz Albisser and support by Vera Sacchetti, I helped to tell the world that Eleonore Peduzzi Riva was born in Basel, worked in Milan and lives in Riehen today.
She still has her studio in Milan. The drawers are full of designs for private homes and apartment conversions and the folders are full of exhibitions and brand consultations for companies like De Padova, Abet Print, Mira X, Samit, Monteur and Vistosi. The furniture and products she designed range from an ashtray for Artemide (“Spyros”, 1976), an aluminum system for furniture (“Lega Leggera”, 1959) to a glass floor lamp (“Vacuna”, 1966) and a 60×60 seating group (“Modulo Sessata”, 1981) for Zanotta and the “Tazelwurm”, an endless sofa that she designed with three other Swiss designers for de Sede in 1972.
Eleonore Peduzzi Riva (born 1939) lived and worked in Milan since the late 1950s. Trained as an architect at the Faculty of Architecture at the Polytechnic, her career led to architecture, interior design, exhibition design, industrial design and consulting. If there was no suitable furniture for the various assignments, she designed it herself. When the opportunity arose to work with other creatives, she invited the best ones because she knew everyone and everyone knew her as a “consultant”.
The exhibition at Kunst Raum Riehen showcases some of the objects and furniture Eleonore Peduzzi Riva designed, gives an insight into her professional activities and stages her work in the context of an art space.
Thank you Simone Neuenschwander, Claudia Pantellini, Eva Rohrbach and Jean-Claude Freymond-Guth.
Here a link to Kunst Raum Riehen
Images:
– Digital Collage by Matylda Krzykowski with the glasses EPR designed for herself “I designed the glasses myself because I did not want to see the world in a frame. Back than there were no glasses that big in the market. So I had them made.”
– Photograph from EPR`s studio by Matylda Krzykowski
Following images are from EPR`s archive material, photographed by Matylda Krzykowski in her Milanese studio:
– Exhibition: Schweizer Werkbund, Design aus Italien
– Curriculum: Pomeri for Vistosi Murano Italy, 1972
– EPR buisness card, 1960s
– EPR with Gio Ponti at an exhibition of Abet Laminati
– Campaign for de sede`s DS600, “Organico”
– “Influential Women in Milanese Design”, by Susanne Slesin, The New York Times, Thursday, January 15, 1981