Gaetano Pesce

Gaetano Pesce (La Spezia, 8 November 1939 – New York, 3 April 2024) was an Italian sculptor, designer and architect. Pesce was one of the leading exponents of Italian design, particularly radical design. In 1962 he embarked on a career as a designer, collaborating with the company C&B (now B&B Italia) on the creation of the UP Series, a series of seven models of polyurethane foam armchairs that immediately became one of the icons of Italian industrial design. The most famous is the UP5, which takes the shapes of votive statues of fertility goddesses to create a veritable manifesto of political expression on the condition of women: the society of the late 1960s was not ready to recognise women’s many abilities and relegated them to the margins of the political and social scene.