Enzo Mari

Enzo Mari was born in Novara in 1932 and studied at the Brera Academy in Milan. He worked for Danese for decades, and the two names are hard to separate.

His long-running Serie della Natura reduced everyday subjects — an apple, a pear — to flat symbols, printed as silkscreens from 1961 onward so that art could be produced in quantity rather than as unique objects. 'Tre, la Mela e la Pera' dates from 1963.

The Timor perpetual calendar of 1967 applies the same thinking to a desk object: moulded ABS, flipping cards, nothing decorative. It is held by MoMA and the Cooper Hewitt, and Danese has kept it in production ever since.