Coat rack, Another Green Cactus sculpture by Drocco & Mello

Date: 2018
Artist: Drocco & Mello

Another Green Cactus designed by Drocco & Mello for Gufram is a coat rack made of polyurethane foam in a new green finish.

A different green from the original model (emerald green) released in 1972 and currently sold out.

Published by Gufram, 2018

Internal steel structure embedded in polyurethane foam

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

Guido Drocco is an architect and designer who graduated from the Politecnico di Torino.

From 1962, he worked with architects Gabetti and Isola. He has received numerous architecture awards and continues his collaboration with Gufram.

With Franco Mello, he was part of the Radical Design movement of the 60s, an avant-garde impulse using pop culture and even Kitsch to challenge the canons of modernist good taste. For the young generation of designers of the 60s, plastic appeared as a providential material in a society that was reintroducing fantasy and comfort.

The creations of that era all have something of the "manifesto-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 that are still in limited edition (also present in the greatest museums in the world), such as the famous Pratone (the Meadow), giant blades of grass in polyurethane into which one throws oneself rather than sits, the giant "pebble" armchairs Sedilsasso, or the Bocca sofa, in tribute to Dalí's Mae West sofa...

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

This collection consists of designs made of hardened polyurethane foam with a patented lacquered finish called:

Guflac®

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

Since then, the cacti by Guido Drocco and Franco Mello have been developed by Gufram in numerous colors and different names, such as the white Biancocactus, the black Nerocactus, and the red Rossocactus (all from 2010), and finally the Metacactus, with colors as if scorched 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 Centre Georges Pompidou and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, and the Tate Modern in London.