Daria Triolo, head of communications for Moroso in Italy, is pleased to announce that Patrizia Moroso has received this highest award for her contribution to Italian culture and industry from the Italian president.
Says Triolo, “To our great joy Patrizia has been newly appointed Cavaliere del Lavoro in industry by our president of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano. Patrizia was greatly moved and filled with happiness and emotion at the news arrived in the late Saturday evening.”
Triolo quotes Moroso as saying, “It’s the highest acknowledgment assigned in industry and I can’t but feel greatly honoured. I feel it’s an ward to all my family, especially to my parents: two young friulani, simple but skilled workers who thanks to their far-sightedness have been able to get so far. To them all my gratitude. I feel also representative of many other women and I wish them to acquire more and more space in the entrepreneurial world. Last but not least, let me mention my region – Friuli Venezia Giulia – where you can find tough workers with so many other stories to tell.”
The ceremony will take place in Rome on the occasion of the Festa della Repubblica on June 2.
ABOUT PATRIZIA MOROSO
Patrizia Moroso is the art director of Moroso S.p.a., a family business producing sofas, armchairs and furnishing accessories. She joined the management team in the mid-’80S and in just a few years transformed the firm into a leading international design brand.
Endowed with an outstanding creative and innovatory spirit, Moroso has an innate, insatiable interest in all forms of art, which drives her ahead of her time. As early as 1988 she started working with Ron Arad, who designed his first collection of upholstered furniture for her. Her association with Patricia Urquiola – today a star of international architecture and design – dates back to 1999. In 2004 it was the turn of Tord Boontje, now professor and head of design products at the Royal College of Art, London; and in 2007 that of Tokujin Yoshioka, who not long afterwards was nominated Designer of the Year at Miami Basel.
In 2003 she started to implement her idea of co-operations within the frame of contemporary art. She started off in this new direction with a site-specific installation by artist Michael Lin (who at the time was relatively unknown). Then, in 2006, an alliance with Tobias Reberger, who later won the Golden Lion at the 2009 Venice Art Biennale, and the latest, in 2010, with Francesco Simeti and Andrea Sala.
A self-assured talent scout, Moroso enjoys working with unconventionality and in teams. Her very feminine approach to tactile elements encourages designers to work on the skin of objects. She leaves them free to revive applied arts (weaving/plaiting, embroidery, decoration) and to experiment with all kinds of materials. While creating a fusion of technology and hand-crafting, over the past 20 years Moroso has built up a collection of iconic designs with a coherent hallmark but uniquely reflecting different latitudes and local cultures.
This international outlook has permitted the firm to enter some of the most beautiful places in the world, including New York’s MoMA, the Palais de Tokyo and Le Grand Palais in Paris, not forgetting the Venice Biennale of which Moroso will again be a sponsor this year of the architecture section curated by Kazuo Sejima. Public and private settings are filled with the vibrant presence of products that exude inventiveness and creative flair, having become modern design symbols and part of the history of the genre: in 2010 Philippe Bestenheider’s Nanook chair won the Prize of Prizes for Innovation awarded by the Italian Ministry for Innovation on the recommendation of ADI and given to Patrizia Moroso by the President of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano.
But Moroso’s not sitting on her laurels. Her passion for art led the Lady of Design to amaze us all once again in 2010 when, together with curator Andrea Bruciati, she set up a Moroso award for contemporary art which will select three winners who will be offered a period of residence in London, New York or Milan in order to install their works in the Moroso showroom during each city’s contemporary art fair. Yet a further step down a personal and professional path on which life mixes with work in a very different, non-classifiable creative unicum.
