Black Painted Metal Italian Screen Designed by Bruno Munari for Zanotta, 1990

In his prolific career, Bruno Munari was known for various contributions to art, industrial design, film, architecture, art theory, and technology. Munari’s principles and beliefs were built upon his early involvement in the Futurist movement, which he joined at the age of 19 using the pseudonym “Bum.” During the 1930s, Munari began to move towards Constructivism, particularly with his kinetic sculptures, Useless Machines (begun 1933), meant to transform or complicate their surrounding environments. Throughout his career, Munari was captivated by both a sense of whimsy and the manipulation of artificial light. After World War II, Munari also developed radical innovation in graphics, typography, and book publishing, through the latter creating pieces he would call Useless Books.

Entrepreneur Aurelio Zanotta founded Zanotta in 1954 in Nova Milanese, Italy. Originally called Zanotta Poltrona, it specialized in traditional furniture. By the early 1960s, however, Zanotta had established a reputation for edgy mid-century modern design. Today’s vintage furniture collectors know the brand well for its innovative and wholly sculptural chairs, coffee tables and more.

One of Zanotta’s earliest successes was the Mezzadro stool — better known as the Tractor stool — designed by Pier Giacomo Castiglioni and his brother Achille in the late 1950s. In 1965, Zanotta was among the first furniture companies to work with expanded polyurethane foam and frameless construction, such as for the Throw-Away sofas and armchairs designed by Willie Landels. Another popular design was the Blow chair — designed by Jonathan De Pas, Donato D’Urbino, Paolo Lomazzi and Carla Scolari — viewed by many as a physical expression of late '60s carefree culture.

In 1969, amid the provocative movement we now call Italian Radical Design, Zanotta’s Sacco chair garnered major attention. The boundary-pushing beanbag chair was the brainchild of designers Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini and Franco Teodoro who presented it to Aurelio Zanotta as a transparent vinyl sack loosely filled with small polystyrene balls. He suggested its signature brightly colored leather.

The Sacco chair won the 1970 ADI Design Museum’s Compasso d’Oro award. In 1972, the Museum of Modern Art in New York included it in the landmark exhibition “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape” curated by designer Emilio Ambasz. In 2020, it received a Compasso d’Oro ADI Lifetime Achievement Award for 50 years of enduring popularity. It is now in museum collections around the world including the Triennale Design Museum of Milan, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and London’s Victoria Albert Museum.

After Aurelio Zanotta died in 1991, the company remained in his family and has been run by his three children since 2002. Zanotta continues to set the bar high for furniture design with trend-setting pieces.

On 1stDibs, find a collection of vintage Zanotta seating, tables and other furniture.