Coat rack, Another White Cactus sculpture by Drocco & Mello - Gufram

Date: 2018
Artist: Drocco & Mello
Brand: Gufram
Color: white
Material: polyurethane, Guflac® coating
Dimensions: L 110 x D 70 x H 170 cm

Learn more about this product

“This cactus is a surreal son of anti-design” Guido Drocco

Guido Drocco is an architect and designer, he comes from the Politecnico of Turin.

From 1962, he worked with the architects Gabetti and Isola. He received numerous architectural awards and continued his collaboration with Gufram.

With Franco Mello, he was part of the Radical Movement of the 1960s, an avant-garde movement using pop culture and even Kitch to challenge the canons of good modernist taste. For the young generation of designers of the 1960s, plastic appeared as a providential material, in a society which reintroduced fantasy and comfort.

The creations of the period all have something of the “manifest object”.

Gufram, the publisher since 1968, brought together in 1972 the collection called "I Multipli", of which the Cactus is a part. It includes unusual pieces always in limited edition (also present in the largest museums in the world) including the famous Pratone (the Meadow), giant blades of grass in polyurethane into which we throw ourselves rather than sit, the giant Sedilsasso "armchair" stones or the Bocca sofa, in homage to Dali's Mae West sofa...

The objects in the “I Multipli” collection have been designed to free users from their behavioral habits. Among their influences, land art represented a real source of inspiration for designers of the 60s.

This collection is made up of designs made from hardened polyurethane foam with a patented lacquer finish called:

Guflac®

Here, the Cactus is still a desert plant but it is devoid of thorns and made on a human scale... It is, according to its creator, the "surreal son of phytomorphic-inspired anti-design"

Since then, the cacti of Guido Drocco and Franco Mello have been developed by Gufram with many different colors and names, such as the white Biancocactus, the black Nerocactus, and the red Rossocactus (all from 2010), and finally the Metacactus, with colors as if burned by the sun (2012).

The originals are included in the collections of many institutions, such as the Museum of Modern Art and Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, the Center Georges Pompidou and Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, in Germany, and the Tate Modern in London.

Learn more about the designer

Guido Drocco was born in San Benedetto Belbo, Cuneo, Italy on September 19, 1942. He graduated in architecture at the Polytechnic of Turin (Politecnico di Torino). He carries out professional work in the field of architecture and industrial design and is active in Turin. Since 1996 he has been a lecturer in architectural design at the Faculty of Architecture of the Polytechnic of Turin.

Franco Mello was born in Genoa in 1945. He lived and worked in Turin and Spineto Scrivia. Mello creates in the fields of design, tailoring, graphics, publishing and art. He works on reissues of art books, design catalogs and posters for many Arte Povera alla Transavanguardia artists, including Piero Manzoni, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Peone, Alberto Burri, Yves Klein, Bridget Riley and Pinot Gallizio.

Learn more about the brand

Gufram is an Italian furniture manufacturer based in Barolo (Piedmont region). Founded in 1966 by the Gugliermetto brothers, Gufram, acronym for "Gugliermetto Fratelli Arredamenti Moderni", takes the form of a creative laboratory: they combine their knowledge of local craftsmanship with emerging architects and artists of the time. Their sculptured art objects revolutionized the aesthetics of 1960s furniture. From 1965, Gufram followed the artistic direction of designer Giuseppe Raimondi, who associated the company with emerging artists and architects of the time.

They study new choices of materials and mainly choose polyurethane foam to pad and structure their sculptural creations. Polyurethane will become their trademark. In addition to mastering the processing of flexible polyurethane, Gufram has developed and patented a special finish: Guflac®, the true essence of the company's artisanal spirit: this special and unique paint job makes surfaces more uniform, consistent and elastic . Soft, elegant shapes are thus created, innovative shapes that would otherwise be impossible to cover.

Gufram icons, regardless of the collection they are part of, are made by sculpting flexible polyurethane foam which is then finished or decorated by hand with the Guflac® backing.

Their creations, in the wake of pop art, are anchored in the avant-garde movement of the 1960s.
In 1968, Gufram presented its products under the name Multipli: industrially reproduced art objects in limited edition. Gufram then enjoyed considerable success with the public and the international press. Among their most remarkable creations: the Bocca sofa, originally designed by Salvador Dali, the Cactus coat rack, the majestic Pratone seat or even more recently the grotesque stools in the shape of a tombstone The End from the Toiletpaper collection, or the Broken Mirror imagined by Snarkitecture.
These “domestic sculptures” now appear in the most beautiful homes and the most renowned museums in the world.
The Gufram company was bought in 2012 by entrepreneur Sandra Vezza and her son Charley as artistic director. They were able to breathe new life into the company, notably on the occasion of the company's 50th anniversary celebrations in 2016 but also with new collaborations such as that with Moschino “Moschino kissed Gufram”.