Ugo La Pietra

UGO LA PIETRA

Ugo La Pietra (b.1938, Italy) is an architect, artist, designer, writer, and educator. In the 1960s, he started defining himself as a researcher in the communication and visual art system while simultaneously venturing into the worlds of art and design.

Artist and radical architect, La Pietra has always critically maintained the humanistic and territorial components of design through his works and projects, including his work in teaching, theory, and publishing. Ground-breaking projects include the Telematic House, presented at MoMA in 1972 as part of an exhibition on new domestic landscapes, a prophetic inquiry of new modes for exchanging information between individuals and the environment. He became an art director for Abitare il Tempo between 1986 and 1997; in that capacity he staged annual ‘environments’, inviting artists to collaborate with artisans on multiple objects, integrating separate disciplines into a unity.

La Pietra has disseminated his work through numerous exhibitions in Italy and abroad and has curated several exhibitions at the Triennale di Milano, the Venice Biennale, the Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, the FRAC Centre in Orléans, amongst others. La Pietra has received multiple awards over his career, including the Bugatti-Segantini International Painting Award in 2022. He has taught architecture since 1964 at various universities and academies in Italy and abroad. Currently, he holds a professorship at Politecnico di Milano and NABA in Milan.

Selected Exhibitions

The Venice Biennale, Venice (1970; 1976; 1978; 1980); MoMA, New York (1972); Triennale di Milano, Milan (1979; 1981;1992; 2007); Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, Lyon (1992); FRAC Centre, Orléan (2009); Museo del Novecento, Milan (2011); Galerie Mercier, Paris (2011); Triennale Design Museum, Milan (2014); MAXXI, Rome (2017); Centro Italiano Arte Contemporanea, Foligno (2018); Artvisor, London (2023).

Selected Collections

MoMA, New York; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Yale University, New Haven; FRAC Centre, Orléans; Musée d’Art Moderne, Saint-Etienne; Neue Galerie, Graz; Museé Departemental, Gap; Nordico Stadtmuseum, Linz; Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Triennale Design Museum, Milan; Museo del Novecento, Milan.

Selected Publications

Il sistema disequilibrante, ed. Toselli, Milan 1970; La guida alternativa per la città di Milano, monograph, ed. Progettare Inpiù, Milan 1974/75; Autoarchiterapia, ed. Jabik & Colophon, Milan 1975; Gio Ponti l’arte s’innamora dell’industria, ed. Coliseum, Milan 1988, ed. Rizzoli 1993; La vita è una cuccagna, ed. Alinea, Florence, 2003; Abitare la città, ed. Allemandi, Turin 2011; Inside / Outside, ed. Corraini, Mantua, 2014; Green works it out!, ed. Corraini, Mantua, 2015; Living with art. Research and works in the applied arts and in design, ed. Corraini, Mantua, 2015.