Mario Asnago

Background

Mario Asnago (Barlassina, 25 March 1896 – Monza, 28 January 1981) was an Italian architect and painter. His father Cesare was a cabinet-maker, and his elder brother Amilcare carried on the family business as a small furniture factory in Barlassina; Italian Wikipedia says that firm later put into production many of the designs drawn by Asnago and Vender. He gained his architecture licence in October 1922 at the Regio Istituto di Belle Arti in Bologna and opened a studio in Milan in Via Cappuccio.

Signature Style

Wikipedia calls him a rationalist, and describes the architecture he shared with Claudio Vender as a façade-centred language of simplified composition, modern technology and careful detail, which it relates to a minimalist poetics. Flexform's designer page says the pair's interior objects stand out for tables and chairs with a characteristic X-shaped support, whose slender structure reflects the architects' philosophy of broad surfaces alternating with open spaces.

Notable Works

• The condominiums in Via Euripide in Milan and the offices in Via Alberico Albricci
• Buildings in Piazza Velasca and Via Paolo da Cannobio in Milan, designed with Vender
• For Flexform, the Moka chair, table and display cabinet, designed with Vender in 1939 and produced by Flexform since 1985

Legacy

Asnago retired in 1971. A painter throughout his life, he showed his canvases at the Galleria del Milione in Milan between 1949 and 1959, and the city of Como dedicated an exhibition to his paintings in 1982.