Italian mid-century modern black chairs Leggera by Gio Ponti for Cassina, 1960s

The Leggera chair is as striking on its own as it is in any setting, which is just as Giò Ponti (1891–1979) intended. 

The gifted Milanese architect — who also designed, taught and wrote — studied architecture at the esteemed Polytechnic University of Milan, graduating in 1921. A stint in an architectural office followed, as did award-winning porcelain designs for Richard Ginori. In 1928, Ponti launched the revered design journal Domus, promoting the Novocento movement, which decried the “fake antique” and “ugly modern” in architecture and design. This was very much in line with Ponti’s own distinct style, which united the historical classicism of Italy with a modern ideal. The furniture maker’s work to this day exudes that spirit of innovation and timelessness, just as it did with the Leggera chair. 

Ponti brought new meaning to traditional Italian country furniture with the 1952 Leggera chair and the Superleggera that followed — specifically, he looked to the simple but well-known chairs designed in Chiavari, a nearby fishing village, for inspiration. The Leggera’s gently tapering legs, ladder back and cane seat are features that render it easily recognizable to any collector. And like most of Ponti’s furniture, its tapering supports and lightweight ashwood frame — leggera is Italian for “light” — give it a ballerina-like appearance, as if the chair is dancing on its toes. First produced by Cassina, the Leggera also represented a bold step in its reductionist construction. The frame of the chair was pared down to its most essential lines, offering the illusion of weightlessness, like Ponti’s best work. 

An architect, furniture and industrial designer and editor, Gio Ponti was arguably the most influential figure in 20th-century Italian modernism.

Ponti designed thousands of furnishings and products — from cabinets, mirrors and chairs to ceramics and coffeemakers — and his buildings, including the brawny Pirelli Tower (1956) in his native Milan, and the castle-like Denver Art Museum (1971), were erected in 14 countries. Through Domus, the magazine he founded in 1928, Ponti brought attention to virtually every significant movement and creator in the spheres of modern art and design.

The questing intelligence Ponti brought to Domus is reflected in his work: as protean as he was prolific, Ponti’s style can’t be pegged to a specific genre.

In the 1920s, as artistic director for the Tuscan porcelain maker Richard Ginori, he fused old and new; his ceramic forms were modern, but decorated with motifs from Roman antiquity. In pre-war Italy, modernist design was encouraged, and after the conflict, Ponti — along with designers such as Carlo Mollino, Franco Albini, Marco Zanuso — found a receptive audience for their novel, idiosyncratic work. Ponti’s typical furniture forms from the period, such as the wedge-shaped Distex chair, are simple, gently angular, and colorful; equally elegant and functional. In the 1960s and ’70s, Ponti’s style evolved again as he explored biomorphic shapes, and embraced the expressive, experimental designs of Ettore Sottsass Jr., Joe Colombo and others.

Ponti's signature furniture piece — the one by which he is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Germany’s Vitra Design Museum and elsewhere — is the sleek Superleggera chair, produced by Cassina starting in 1957. (The name translates as “superlightweight” — advertisements featured a model lifting it with one finger.)

Ponti had a playful side, best shown in a collaboration he began in the late 1940s with the graphic artist Piero Fornasetti. Ponti furnishings were decorated with bright finishes and Fornasetti's whimsical lithographic transfer prints of things such as butterflies, birds or flowers; the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts possesses a 1950 secretary from their Architetturra series, which feature case pieces covered in images of building interiors and facades. The grandest project Ponti and Fornasetti undertook, however, lies on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean: the interiors of the luxury liner Andrea Doria, which sank in 1956.

Widely praised retrospectives at the Queens Museum of Art in 2001 and at the Design Museum London in 2002 sparked a renewed interest in Ponti among modern design aficionados. (Marco Romanelli’s monograph, which was written for the London show, offers a fine overview of Ponti’s work.) Today, a wide array of Ponti’s designs are snapped up by savvy collectors who want to give their homes a touch of Italian panache and effortless chic.

Find a range of vintage Gio Ponti desks, dining chairs, coffee tables and other furniture on 1stDibs.