Timeline - Franco Perrotti

1976/2009

An unruly and provocative demiurge, Franco Perrotti is, above all, a draftsman of disquiet. A proudly dissociated soul, to quote one of his creations, the Perrotti Dissociati. His practice spans design and art, following the traces of an inner fractal geometry that is both chaos and rigor, irony and passion, dissent against the capitalization of thought and action. Discovering the story of Franco Perrotti means delving into the depths of one of the last rebels of design. His journey is closely tied to a Milan increasingly subservient to
consumerism, becoming over time the symbol of a system he no longer wishes to submit to.
In 1976, after graduating from the Polytechnic School of Design, he entered the workforce by joining one of the iconic companies of the post-war furniture industry: Tecno Spa, founded by Osvaldo and Fulgenzio Borsani in 1953. It is here that he discovers a design of drawing but also of materials, of body, of manual labor, and sweat. He begins to talk with those who work at the milling machine, with the carpenter, with those who sew by hand. “I was thirsty to learn how it’s done. I thought I knew how to think, but I was curious to know how to do,” he says. Designing with the knowledge of how to build becomes the turning point that will fully express itself in the artistic field. These are the first seeds of a craft born from the confrontation with matter, from an intelligence of the hands that is pure instinct, from a mind-hands-heart connection that will be the distinctive feature of his work.
After the years at Tecno, he follows his libertine and libertarian nature by venturing into freelance work, thus founding the brand Perrotti Dissociati Design and starting to collaborate as Art Director at Faram Spa, where he designs office furniture. He does it his way, of course, designing executive chairs with imaginative names and seats meant to be used without rules, or boomerang-shaped desks “to grab people by the liver.” Irony is the common thread that also connects subsequent experiences at Moroso, Poltrona Frau, Airon. “You can’t do design without being ironic. You need to use a lot of it, especially with yourself, to remember you’re alive.” Franco Perrotti traverses the history of Italian design to ultimately choose not to be part of it. He decides to go beyond, to listen to himself, to remain faithful to his ethical and critical nature, deeply intolerant of the dictates of a society increasingly dominated by capital. He chooses, therefore, to be his only client. Thus, in 1997, after a lifetime in Milan, he returns to Abruzzo to give shape to his most precious creation, Rude Bravo, together with Mario Mariano and Tanino Liberatore. With this turn, he makes the inexorable approach to art, understood as a tool of liberation. Rude Bravo is the Charon that ferries him between the shores of a production finally freed from the needs of consumption. The descent of the hands into the matter becomes stronger, more urgent, and the furnishings of Rude Bravo are an expression of his being, indeed misaligned: almost horizontal containers and almost vertical sideboards, chairs to sink into the “cathodic breasts” of Fellini inspiration, chairs for all seasons or for just one season. “There is everything the market does not ask for, and more.” There is a wild imagination that smiles at a life ready to surprise, for better or worse, there is the lightness of someone who has been able to delve into the depths of being, there is experimentation with matter, raw and imperfect, rough, smooth, to be forged, humbly, celebrating human error.

Valentina Lonati

I came here in 1976 because that’s how it happened. After 10 years, when I left, someone wrote that I had designed well and long within a temple of design.
I didn’t know it, but it’s true. I enjoyed a freedom of learning hard to imagine. Here I learned to connect thought with its possibility of realization… putting together head, hands, and heart, while Kugo Toru watched me benevolently.

Franco Perrotti

1976 Tecno

1978 P23

1979 P201 D201

1980 SP148 S148

1982 WSp

1983 P44

1981 TARGA

After the summer of 1986, I find myself an Independent Designer… it’s a word!
How does one qualify, how does one define independence?
Who is qualified?
The skilled, the capable, the expert?
Or the adept, the tried, the recognized!
…the good…worthy…excellent!
Following the dictionary, you can go on for quite a while.

Franco Perrotti

1986 PERROTTI DISSOCIATI

1992 AUDIENTIA

1992 AUDIENTIA

1999 LE BIG

1991 WAIT AND HOPE

1991 TAVOLO LUIGI

1991 COLLEZIONE 1953

1991 COLLEZIONE 1953

1991 COLLEZIONE 1953

1991 MOBY D

1991 CERASELLA

1995 TEMPI MODERNI

1995 RO-TONDO QUADRATO TONDO

1995 COCINA

1996 AMERICANA

1996 MOCAMBO boè tower

1996 OSTAR

1996 OSTAR

1996 STORK

1996 STORK

1996 VASSOIO

1996 ORE PICCANTI

Rude Bravo is a place where dreams and fantasies are honored. Rude Bravo does not appreciate large series. Rude Bravo is a place where sometimes a single specimen is enough to tell a story, which remains suspended, like an apostrophe, in time and air.

Marco Squarcini

1996 RUDE BRAVO

Franco Perrotti is the inventor of Rude Bravo, the ideologue, the preacher: a designer (a) all-around, 45 years in this world, who owes his training, without a doubt, to the North: he designed for a long time inside a temple of design, which was Tecno. He has ravaged furniture, seats, objects, showrooms, trade fair stands, and girls, especially in spring. After learning enough, he takes his life into his own hands and with a handful of fanatics creates the brand “Perrotti Dissociati”; he designs consumer products for those who try not to buy smoke (quality is a well-dreamed dream before being sophisticated marketing…). To avoid remaining a slave to the North, he returns to Chieti and founds Rude Bravo.

Tanino Liberatore, born Gaetano, plays the appropriate role of the renegade, the subversive, the villain, the ferox, as expected from someone who draws Ranxerox. Tanino’s life, an Architecture refugee, is full of words of fear: Cannibale, il Male, Frigidaire,
el Vìbora, Bordello, and above all the Ranxerox affair, a nocturnal obsession of approximately one generation. In the cheerful company, Tanino is the communicative soul: from Paris, where he matured, he heavily influenced the underground spirits of the eighties in the Northern Hemisphere. Now he transplants tectonic violence into Rude Bravo that will take on various appearances (furniture cheek, chair prosthesis, bed fragment for those dying of starvation).

Mario Mariano, architect and urban planner, has been an apprentice of design seeking in construction sites the summa (or at least the sum) of knowledge concerning every issue related to building. Where laws, standards, and regulations are as binding as logarithms; gravity, the theodolite, Mario performs infinite operations becoming somewhat the bouncer of zoning plans. Being 32 years old, he is young, and in Rude Bravo, he is the pivot (the rhyme would say: rookie, but rather: of the three ball throwers, he is the one whose head is closest to his shoulders).

The collaboration with Tanino and Mario ends in February 2000 and subsequently, Lorena Mariani joins Rude Bravo.