The Estorick Collection opens 2026 with the UK’s first solo exhibition dedicated to Alessandro Mendini (1931–2019), one of post-war Italy’s most creative and influential designers and architects. Bringing together around 50 key works – from furniture and drawings to paintings, rugs and design objects – the show celebrates Mendini’s playful and poetic approach to design across his extraordinary career and through his iconic collaborations with companies such as Alessi and Swatch.

Born in Milan, Mendini worked with figures like Robert Venturi and Ettore Sottsass in addition to editing Casabella, Domus and Modo (which he founded), becoming a central voice in postmodernism – his work being defined by its wit and exuberance, and by a broad spectrum of artistic references that shaped his unique approach to design.

A significant source of inspiration was the Italian Futurist movement of the early 20th century. Mendini shared its utopian ambition to ‘reconstruct the universe’ by fusing art and everyday life. The exhibition highlights this connection through two bold works in fabric dedicated to Futurist artist Fortunato Depero, as well as a series of “mechanical masks” paying tribute to figures such as F. T. Marinetti, Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Gino Severini and Antonio Sant’Elia.

The exhibition explores other aspects of the close relationship between Mendini’s work and that of the historical avant-gardes. Highlights of the show include a Kandissi sofa, inspired by Kandinsky’s abstract compositions, whilst a later group of sculptures and vases reference the mannequin-like figures that appear in Malevich’s works of the 1930s. Also featured is the celebrated Proust Armchair of 1978: a neo- Baroque item of furniture transformed with Pointillist colour. Such pieces epitomise Mendini’s simultaneously respectful and irreverent engagement with art history – a consistent feature of his work being its gleeful subversion of the Modernist dictum ‘form follows function’.

The exhibition also includes a number of Mendini’s whimsical, anthropomorphic creations, like the now-ubiquitous Anna G. and Alessandro M. bottle openers and corkscrews (first marketed by Alessi in 1994), which capture his philosophy of “treating objects as if they were human beings; I make them smile.” An illustrated catalogue with an essay by the exhibition’s curator Alberto Fiz accompanies the show, realised in collaboration with the Archivio Alessandro Mendini, providing new perspectives on the life and ideas of a figure whose projects have changed the face of modern society. Since 2019 Elisa and Fulvia Mendini have been in charge of Archivio Alessandro Mendini and their father’s studio.