Ingo Maurer Biography
Ingo Maurer (Reichenau, 12 May 1932) is a German designer and entrepreneur, specialized in the design of lighting fixtures. After working as a typographer between Germany and Switzerland and completing his graphic design studies in Munich in 1958, between 1960 and 1963 he lived between New York and San Francisco working as an independent designer. It was in 1960 that he founded the company Design M, which later became Ingo Maurer GmbH: among the first creations of the house was the Bulb table lamp (1966), in shiny chromed metal and blown crystal. Subsequently, the company will produce other lamps designed by Maurer himself, several of which will be included in the design collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York: among them Gulp (1969), Light Structure (1970), Little Black Nothing and the low voltage YaYaHo (1988), Los Minimalos Dos, Lucellino Wall, Wo bist Du, Edison, Zettel'z (1999), Campari Light (2002) and Porca Miseria! (2003). Exhibitions and performances dedicated to him or curated by him were held in various cities in Europe and beyond: in Paris (Ingo Maurer Lumière aha SoSo, 1986, and Ingo Maurer: Lumière Hasard Réflexion, 1989), St. Petersburg (Design.. .?? - - !! Illumination by Ingo Maurer and his team/commando at the Russian Ethnographic Museum, 1992), Munich (Ingo Maurer: Arbeiten mit Lich at the Villa Stuck Museum, 1992), Amsterdam (Licht licht at the Stedelijk Museum , 1993), Cologne (Tales of light, 1998), New York (Projects 66 at the Museum of Modern Art, 1998), Barcelona (Ingo Maurer. Passiò per la Llum, 2001) and Frankfurt (Ephemer Visionär Ingo Maurer. Licht, 2002 ). Some of his installations have finally found a place in the Westfriedhof and Münchner Freiheit stations of the Munich underground. Due to the importance of his research on lighting fixtures, he has received several international awards: among them the Design Award from the city of Munich (1999), the Primavera del Disseny in Barcelona (2001), and the Georg Jensen in Copenhagen in 2003. In 2005 he was named Royal Designer of Industry by the Royal Society of Arts in London, while a year later he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Art. In 2011, he was awarded the Compasso d'Oro Association for Industrial Design. Ingo Maurer lives and works in Munich.
