Aldo Rossi

ALDO ROSSI (Milan, 1931 - 1997).
"Catastrofi urbana", 1983.
Mixed media (colored pencil and ink) on paper.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 18 x 12 cm (drawing); 20.5 x 14.5 cm (paper); 33 x 27 cm (frame).

Aldo Rossi was an Italian architect, theorist, writer and designer, author of important projects in Europe and the United States and winner of the 1990 Pritzker Architecture Prize (equivalent to the Nobel Prize). He was considered one of the main exponents of the postmodern movement. He studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano, where he graduated in 1959. In 1963 he began teaching, first as an assistant to Ludovico Quaroni (1963) at the School of Urban Planning in Arezzo, then to Carlo Aymonino at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia. He became interested in the urban planning of cities, even publishing a book on the subject. For the 1979 Venice Biennale he designed a floating theater, the Teatro del Mondo, with a capacity for 250 spectators seated around the stage. More recently he also designed the building of the National Opera of Genoa. His first work in America was also a theater, the Lighthouse Theatre, located on Lake Ontario in Toronto, Canada. In 1995 he built the current building of the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht, The Netherlands. At the architectural level the following works stand out: the Teatro del Mondo floating theater (Venice), the Friedrichstadt Housing Building (Berlin), the San Cataldo Cemetery (Modena), the National Opera House (Genoa), the Paganini Theater and the development of the Piazza della Pilotta (Italy) and the Museum of the Sea of Galicia (together with César Portela; Vigo, Spain). His creations in the field of industrial design can be seen today in such outstanding collections as the MoMA in New York.