Milan’s Carrozzeria900 — a creative space founded by Mauro Bracciali that has established itself as a destination for rare Modernariato pieces since 2011 — is hosting LA VIE DOUCE | The 1970s of Willy Rizzo, a show-installation exploring the sophisticated, theatrical, and cosmopolitan aesthetic of 1970s interiors. Through a curated selection of Willy Rizzo’s furniture designs in dialogue with lamps, objects, and anonymous pieces from the same visual universe, the exhibition transforms the gallery into three distinct domestic environments.
A Renaissance Man of the 20th Century
Willy Rizzo (1928–2013) occupies a singular place in the creative landscape of the 1900s: photographer, designer, journalist, connoisseur of art and high society. An Italian rebel who excelled in glamour, he married his career as a celebrity photographer with that of a furniture designer, building a sophisticated visual language deeply rooted in the culture of European dolce vita.
Born in Naples in 1928, Rizzo discovered photography as a teenager. During his school years in Paris he captured his classmates with a camera gifted by his mother. In 1944, still an adolescent, he photographed destroyed tanks in Tunisia at twilight. By 1945, at eighteen, his professional career began: France Dimanche sent him to cover the first Cannes Film Festival, and he went on to become a pillar of Paris Match from its 1949 founding. He collaborated with Vogue for over twenty years, and his lens captured Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, Pablo Picasso, Audrey Hepburn, and Jack Nicholson, among countless others.
When Photography Met Furniture
LA VIE DOUCE is the first Italian exhibition devoted to Rizzo’s design work — a career that began almost by accident in Rome during the golden years of Fellini’s dolce vita. Married at the time to actress Elsa Martinelli, Rizzo purchased a commercial space overlooking Piazza di Spagna and furnished it with sofas, low tables, consoles, hi-fi cabinets, and other projects he designed himself, each piece handcrafted under his supervision. It was an instant success.
“I’m a photographer who makes furniture,” Rizzo liked to say. He had no interest in Scandinavian design or the psychedelic, ultra-pop trends dominating the era. Instead, he developed his own vision of modernity: sophisticated, theatrical, built from noble, reflective materials — stainless steel, glass, marble, brass, granite. His interiors became instantly iconic: sensual, cinematic spaces where every element seemed designed for conversation, parties, encounters, and social rituals. Soon the international jet set clamored for his pieces — Salvador Dalí and Brigitte Bardot (for her legendary Madrague in Saint-Tropez) among them.
Through the Lens of the 1970s
LA VIE DOUCE uses Willy Rizzo’s vision to tell the story of a decade when a new idea of design took shape — one that challenged rigid bourgeois modernism, sparking enthusiasms, resistances, and rethinks that would redefine contemporary design culture.
The exhibition space is transformed into three distinct rooms — living room, bedroom, and bar — conceived as fragments of a grand 1970s home:
The Bar is dedicated to 1970s conviviality and Rizzo’s jet-set universe. A steel bar with stools stands in dialogue with Ettore Sottsass’s Ultrafragola mirror — an iconic, luminous presence that appears as a colorful apparition.
The Living Room features Rizzo’s yellow velvet sofa, the famous low bottle-holder coffee table, alongside a desk and chair. The theatrical character of the space is defined by the reflective steel Love Lamp, an undisputed presence in the room.
The Bedroom revolves around Rizzo’s own bed design: an intimate environment delineated by his chest and dresser, a large steel panel, sculptural lamps with steel bases, and a luminous mirror by Gino Sarfatti — elements that perfectly capture the spirit of the era.
A Window into a Lost World
Like the apartments Willy Rizzo designed in the 1970s, LA VIE DOUCE offers a visual passage through a historical moment when luxury coincided with the pursuit of immediate sensory fulfillment, experimentation, and absolute freedom — when design shaped atmosphere, image, and memory.
Carrozzeria900 — Via Teodosio 64, Milano
June 25 – July 31, 2026
Free entry
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