Global publisher Phaidon has reported that industrial designer Richard Sapper died on Dec. 31, 2015. Read the full Phaidon release here.
Sapper was a prolific designer whose iconic designs include the Tizio task lamp, which he created in 1972 for Italian lighting manufacturer Artemide.
In 1000 Lamps 1960 to the Present (Taschen, 2005) the Tizio entry reads, “In Italian the word tizio means “fellow” or “chap,” and certainly Richard Sapper’s iconic task light (1972) has an endearing yet masculine character. With its blatantly high-tech rhetoric, the Tizio enjoyed huge popularity in the 1980s as a must-have Matt Black “designer” object. Its commercial success, however, did not rest on stylistic grounds alone. With its tilting head and exquisitely counterbalanced arms that carry the low-voltage current, the Tizio achieved an important technical breakthrough. In recognition of this, the design was awarded a Compasso d’Oro in 1979. A smaller and a larger version of the light were introduced in the early 1990s.”
Phaidon will be publishing a forthcoming monograph on the designer for release this June.
