Agenore Fabbri Bench Model Nastro Di Gala for Tecno, Italy

Agenore Fabbri was an Italian painter and sculptor. When he was only 12, he entered the School of Arts and Crafts in Pistoia, and then was admitted to the Florence Academy of Fine Arts, where he frequented the artists' Caffè Giubbe Rosse, the meeting point for the intellectuals known as the Ermetici Group and came into contact with painter Ottone Rosai and poet Mario Luzi. During his life, he also met other famous artists, among others Picasso, Arturo Martini, Lucio Fontana. In 1967, he illustrated 10 poems by Nobel Prize winner Salvatore Quasimodo, who after a long friendship, had dedicated an open letter to Fabbri. The letter was published in the Italian weekly magazine Tempo on the occasion of his solo exhibition at the Galleria Arte Borgogna, Milan. Fabbri received a lot of awards, including the International Sculpture Award (1955 and 1959), the First Prize at the Mostra d'Arte Sacra in Trieste (1966), and those of the Milan Triennale, where he was appointed with two Gold Medals and the Grand Prix for Ceramics. Fabbri worked mainly with ceramic and terracotta, developing progressively new solutions such as riflessatura (reflection), while in the following two decades, he preferred bronze and wood. He also executed many artworks using materials like iron, tin, zinc and steel. From 1981, he discovered painting, before using the classic oil and acrylic colors and then, in the last phase of his career, adding to the canvas materials of recovery such as sand, stones, rags and textiles, tin cans and much more.

From his early start at his father’s boutique furniture and cabinetry atelier — Arredamenti Borsani (ABV) — Italian designer Osvaldo Borsani began to steadily dream to life the movement-inducing pieces that would eventually lead to him founding his innovative furniture company, Tecno, with his twin brother, Fulgenzio. 

Born in the commune of Varedo in northern Italy’s Lombardy region, Borsani studied at the Brera Academy in Milan — the same school attended by such luminaries as designer Piero Fornasetti and artist Lucio Fontana — as well as the Polytechnic University of Milan. He first worked for the family furniture-making firm, ABV, an atelier influenced by the more expressive and curvaceous wing of Art Deco design. Borsani took over Arredamenti Borsani in 1937.

With his stylish and technically innovative furniture, Borsani helped change the face of Italian design in the 1950s and ’60s. His sofas and chairs, featuring deeply upholstered seating and adjustable position settings, have an aura of optimism and efficiency that still seems fresh and lively today.

While he is today recognized as a master of mid-century modernist Italian furniture, Borsani is most famous these days for cofounding Tecno. (He and Fulgenzio also created Villa Borsani, a visionary mid-century estate cherished for its modern lines and exquisite custom furnishings.) 

When Borsani opened Tecno, an office-focused maker of industrial design, his design sensibilities had evolved toward furnishings with strong, simple forms enhanced by mechanical innovations, as with the P40 adjustable armchair.

When they were originally released, Tecno pieces like the P40 and the award-winning D70 sofa bed were acclaimed as cutting-edge, and they are still considered groundbreaking in their adaptability and functionality. The firm quickly garnered widespread acclaim for its tech-forward designs and quality craftsmanship.

Borsani would be Tecno’s lead designer for 30 years, while partnering on projects with the likes of architect Eugenio Gerli and fostering work by Vico Magistretti, Carlo De Carli, Robin Day and others.

Borsani designed pieces for Tecno until shortly before his death in 1985, when his daughter Valeria and her husband, Marco Fantoni, took over the creative work. 

Today, the family’s legacy is preserved by Borsani’s architect grandson Tommaso Fantoni, who, along with Norman Foster, curated a blockbuster retrospective of Osvaldo Borsani’s work at Milan’s Triennale Design Museum in 2018.

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