A pair of floor lamps by Kenjiro Azuma, produced in Italy by Gaetano Missaglia circa 1970. Each lamp is built with a painted metal structure, a Perspex diffuser and a stone base. The slatted triangular shades give the lamps a strong sculptural quality, connecting the design to Azuma’s broader practice as a sculptor.
1970
Painted metal, Perspex and stone
40.6" L × 12.2" W × 27.2" H
(103 cm L × 31 cm W × 69 cm H)
About the Maker
Kenjiro Azuma, also known as Kengiro Azuma, was a Japanese-born sculptor who lived and worked for much of his career in Milan. Born in Yamagata, Japan, in 1926, he studied sculpture in Tokyo before moving to Italy in 1956 on an Italian government scholarship. He studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan and became a student and assistant of Marino Marini, one of Italy’s most important 20th-century sculptors.
Azuma is best known for his abstract sculpture, especially his long-running MU series, a body of work tied to ideas of emptiness, silence and spiritual space. His work was included in The New Japanese Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1966, and he later taught at the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan. He received Japan’s Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon in 1995 and Milan’s Ambrogino d’Argento in 1996.
Gaetano Missaglia was an Italian lighting producer associated with sculptural lamps of the 1960s and 1970s, often made in metal, acrylic, Lucite, marble or stone. This pair reflects the crossover between postwar Italian lighting design and Azuma’s sculptural language.
