Donato D'Urbino

1932 Mailand



Born in Milan in 1935, Donato D'Urbino studied at Milan Polytechnic until 1966. There Donato D'Urbino met Gionatan De Pas and Paolo Lomazzi, with whom he opened a studio in Milan in 1966 in Milan. "Blow", an inflatable chair of PVC film the De Pas/D'Urbino/Lomazzi trio designed for Zanotta, made them famous over night in 1967.
In 1970 Donato D'Urbino, De Pas, and Lomazzi again made a splash with "Joe", a chair they designed for Poltronova. Shaped like an outsize baseball glove, "Joe" is also intended as a tribute to the American baseball player Joe DiMaggio, famous for his homeruns and his ill-fated marriage to movie icon Marilyn Monroe. Both chairs are important exemplars of radical design in Italy, representing a clean break with traditional notions of seating and lifestyle. In 1973 De Pas/D'Urbino/Lomazzi designed (for Zanotta) "Sciangai" - an upright bunch of wooden chopsticks 1.50 meters high. This quirky piece exemplifes the humor common to the three designers and is typical of their designs. The undulating form of the 1985 "Onda" sofa can be interpreted as a tongue-in-cheek allusion to Le Corbusier as its model.
On Gionatan De Pas's death in 1991, Donato D'Urbino and Paolo Lomazzi carried on the practice, which was now known as D'Urbino/Lomazzi. They created numerous other witty designs, including "Nuvola", a double bed for Zanotta (1992), "Rosa del Deserto", a table for Tonelli (1994), composed of circle segments and a round glass tabletop, and "Nessie" (1996), a serpentine hanging lamp for Lumina Italia.