Pratone chair

Description:	But Where Do You Sit? Frivolous, fun furniture in bright colors and kitschy themes expanded furnitures playfulness in the 1960s. Innovative Italian designers pioneered new ideas, materials and anti-design shapes in domestic furnishings. They created modern, functional pieces that reflected new radical expressions in art, politics, space technology and youth culture. The invention of polypropylene made it possible to make chairs, tables and domestic equipment in one cast in every thinkable color and form. Pop artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein influenced Italian designers to play with forms and symbols. The result was objects that were more statements than products, like the chair/bed Pratone by Gruppo Strum from 1970. Gruppo Strum, founded in 1966, was one of several designer groups that embraced the anti-design cultural movement, making a statement against the world of consumption--thus many of their experimental projects were prototypes which never reached mass production. The 1999 exhibition Great Design: 100 Masterpieces from the Vitra Design Museum, chose Pratone as the most important representative of the modern design experiments. According to Vitra Design Museum: Pratone (large meadow/lawn) is an allegory, a longing for nature which came to the fore during the late 1960s as a part of the hippie protest against a glutted consumer society. To create the appearance of a tall patch of grass, the Gruppo Strum has Pratone constructed from cold-foamed polyurethane, painted with green varnish. In contrast to the usual passivity of sitting, the user of this chair has to decide where to take a seat in the sculptural form. The seat also suggested that the outside could now be brought inside.
Source:	http://www.digitalindy.org/cdm/ref/collection/tcm/id/2078
Collection:	The Children's Museum of Indianapolis
Rights:	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/;
Copyright:	Creative Commons (CC By-SA 3.0);
Subjects:	Chairs Nineteen seventies

Further information on this record can be found at its source.