Ingo Maurer (1932-2019) changed, with his poetic, ironic and playful look, the world of lighting devices. Maurer, who was both the designer and manufacturer of his own lamps — still made today in his factory in Bavaria — was also a master of innovation, curious and skilled experimenter with materials and types of lighting.

Legend has it that it all began when he went fishing with his father, on Lake Constance. Ingo Maurer is fascinated by the effects of light on the water surface, but also by the surrounding nature — so much so that clouds, birds and leaves will inspire many of his designs.

In his projects, intuition and technique will always be in perfect balance. It is no coincidence that his first success in the world of design, now part of the MoMA's permanent collection, is Bulb, a lamp based on the classic and traditional Edison bulb. An archetype born in a dream in Venice and created the next day in the furnaces of Murano, which shows once and for all how thin, for Maurer, the border between art, craftsmanship and design is. But Bulb is also the embodiment of another aspect of Maurer's philosophy: the idea that the important thing, in a lamp, is light, rather than form. “[Light] is the fourth dimension. Something spiritual, mystical, closely connected with our well-being,” he said in one of the last interviews, in 2015 for Living. A theme that has been recurring in his work, becoming a new paradigm for the lighting industry.

An entrepreneur before he was a designer, Ingo Maurer was also a company. And although there is no doubt that his genius was the basis of everything, it was his entrepreneurial capacity, the desire to involve and value his collaborators, and the intuition to step aside for the common good that made his ideas great. Speaking about his creative workshop at the Corriere della Sera, in 2018, Maurer said: “It's my chaos full of fairytales. I was able to create a team that I consider a bouquet composed of many different flowers.”

Throughout his career, places and encounters will remain a source of inspiration: from Japanese origami to the artist Alexander Calder's Mobiles, from the imaginary of pop culture to ready-made, to minimal art. Among the more than 200 pieces designed and produced over fifty years, the best known are perhaps Lucellino, a light bulb with wings, a masterpiece of poetry and delicacy declined in dozens of variants; the YaYaHo system that the user can modify as desired, and which, among other things, introduced low-voltage chain lights to Europe; the Campari Light, a lamp made with the iconic Campari bottles designed by Fortunato Depero and the Canned Light, a tribute to Andy Warhol and his Campbell soups. Other emblematic projects are the Zettel's lamp and the Holonzki wall lamp, which show its sensitivity to the presence/absence of light. His favorite lamp, however, remained the one designed for his wife: a sign that for him work and love were strongly interconnected, indeed, that work was a way of expressing love.

Ingo Maurer was also a pioneer of new technologies. In addition to the already mentioned chain of low-voltage lights, which paved the way for many subsequent interpretations, Maurer was the first to use LED technology in table lamps, then OLEDs in 2006. In his lamps, the installation of the elements is astounding — simple, essential and honest, without technical superstructures. Thanks to the constant confrontation with his technicians, he gave them space to express themselves and experiment, exalting the work of the team.

Of his work, the designer Alessandro Mendini said: “Maurer doesn't design lamps like any normal, typical designer does. Maurer 'uses' bulbs (of all types), combines them, exploits them, mounts them together, disassembles them, divides them, etc., for objectives and purposes that have nothing directly to do with the intention of 'designing a lamp as a tool for making light'. [...] A light not of recollection, but rather a nervous energy of dispersion”.