Cesare Cassina Biography
Cesare Cassina (1909 - 1979) was born in Meda on 10 February 1909. At 18, after a long apprenticeship in Milan which allowed him to obtain the recognition of finished upholsterer, he began working with his brother Umberto, 9 years older, from strong character and natural entrepreneurial skills, towards which Cesare will always feel esteem and profound admiration. In the immediate post-war period the Cassinas furnished the most beautiful passenger ships of the public and private shipyards of Genoa, starting from the Andrea Doria up to the Costa fleet, but it was from the meeting with Giò Ponti that the model was structured which would then be followed by all design companies: the company, without neglecting its artisanal nature, makes its technical skills available to the designer and starts mass production. The Maestro found in Cassina the laboratory where he could experiment with his ideas and give life to iconic projects such as the 646 chairs and the Superleggera. The era of Industrial Design had begun and Cesare Cassina worked with all the designers of the time: Franco Albini, Ico Parisi, Carlo De Carli, Gianfranco Frattini, Angelo Mangiarotti, Afra and Tobia Scarpa, Mario Bellini, Vico Magistretti, the brothers Castiglioni, Archizoom, Alessandro Mendini, Gaetano Pesce, Toshiyuki Kita. The intelligence open to research and innovation sensed that ideas and avant-gardes, even the most provocative ones, would become the classics of tomorrow. Future prospects were perceived with equal importance to the past: thus Cesare Cassina began a philological work of rediscovery of the Modern Movement in 1965, putting into production within the I Maestri Collection the works of Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand, Frank Lloyd Wright, Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, Charrles Rennie Mackintosh, Gunnar Asplund. In 1962 Cesare Cassina with Dino Gavina decided to enter the lighting sector: they contacted Sergio Gandini and Flos was born. In 1966, to create an even larger furniture production, together with Piero Busnelli, he founded another company in the fertile Brianza district: C&B (now B&B Italia) was born.
