Ingo Maurer

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Ingo Maurer (born May 12, 1932 in Reichenau ; † October 21, 2019 in Munich ) was a German industrial designer who specialized in lamps and light installations .

Life

Ingo Maurer was the son of a fisherman who also worked as an inventor. Maurer grew up with his four siblings on the island of Reichenau in Lake Constance . After the death of his father, he completed an apprenticeship as a typesetter in Constance . He then switched to graphic design and studied commercial graphics in Munich from 1954 to 1958 . In 1960 he emigrated to the USA , where he worked as a graphic designer in New York and San Francisco until 1963. In 1966, as an autodidact in the field of industrial design, he founded a company under the name Design M , in which he developed, produced and sold his own designs for lights to product maturity. "Bulb", one of his first designs from 1966, was already included in the Design Collection of the Museum of Modern Art in 1969.

In 1984 he presented the low-voltage lighting system "YaYaHo", which consists of two horizontally stretched metal cables and freely movable lighting elements with halogen lamps . The lighting system became the model for numerous imitators. The Design M company was renamed Ingo Maurer GmbH and enlarged as required. However, the company headquarters always remained in Munich.

In 1989 the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Jouy-en-Josas near Paris showed Maurer's first works with light that were not of a commercial nature. The exhibition was entitled Ingo Maurer: Lumière Hasard Réflexion . Since then, his designs and objects have been shown in a number of exhibitions, including the solo exhibitions: Ingo Maurer: Working with light in the Villa Stuck , Munich (1992), light light in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1993), ephemeral visionary Ingo Maurer.Licht in the Museum of Applied Art, Frankfurt. In 2002 the Vitra Design Museum organized Ingo Maurer: Light - Reaching for the Moon , a traveling exhibition that was shown in Europe and Japan . In 2007 the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York showed the exhibition Provoking Magic: Lighting of Ingo Maurer .

Lighting at the Westfriedhof subway station in Munich
Illumination on the Munich Freedom subway

From 1990 on, Ingo Maurer was not only designing lamps for serial production but also planning lighting installations for rooms for public and private clients, e.g. B. the dome-shaped light objects for the Westfriedhof subway station in Munich (1998). For Issey Miyake he realized an installation for a fashion show in Paris (1999) and a light object for Miyake's London showroom . In 2006 he designed light objects and installations for the interior of the Atomium in Brussels .

Well-known designs are u. a. the red plastic stork feet Bibibibi (1982), the winged pear Lucellino (1992), the broken lamp Porca Miseria! (1994), the exploded Zettelkasten Zettel'z 5 (1997). Since the early 1980s, Maurer has been working with a team of designers / developers who support him in implementing his ideas. At the furnishing trade fairs in Frankfurt , Cologne and Milan , he attracted attention with his unusual presentations since the 1970s. In 1999 he opened his own showroom in New York, in 2009 a second, larger showroom in Munich, which is also used for exhibitions. From 2008 to 2009 he also designed the lighting concept for the Münchner Freiheit underground station .

Maurer was concerned with the will to form, the function of light objects and their effect on people.

Quotes

“I don't have a strategy of my own in my work. I love the unconscious. It's like when a child sees a crack in the wall and his imagination turns it into a valley. This way of working often creates joy in me, but sometimes also pain. In any case, it is important to me to work in such a way that one day I don't stand next to me, look over my shoulder and wonder what I'm actually doing there. I leave the analysis of my work to the others. I am really often amazed at what others interpret into my work. "

- Ingo Maurer (2003)

“Design where you can no longer feel the person behind it bores me. [...] What is important to me is the light - and the transience. A thing shouldn't stand there like a cinder block, like a monument for eternity. We are successful when we trigger a feeling in people. At the fair, it often happens that scowl-faced people creep down the hallways, then come in, look around and smile. This joy on their faces is what makes me happy. "

- Ingo Maurer (2003)

Prizes and awards

literature

Movie

museum

Web links

Commons : Ingo Maurer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Elisa von Hof: Lighting designer Ingo Maurer is dead. In: Spiegel Online . October 22, 2019, accessed October 22, 2019 .
  2. ^ Bernhard Dessecker: Ingo Maurer: Designing with Light. Design with light. Prestel Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7913-3829-3 . (English)
  3. ^ Helmut Bauer, Deyan Sudjic, Christiane Germain, Brigitte Schütz: Ingo Maurer: Making Light. Nazraeli Press, Paso Robles, CA 1992, ISBN 3-923922-07-8 . (English)
  4. ↑ a b biography of Ingo Maurer from April 2018.
  5. ↑ a b Alexander von Vegesack, Jochen Eisenbrand: Deyan Sudjic: Ingo Maurer: Light - Reaching for the Moon. Vitra Design Museum, 2003, ISBN 3-931936-43-0 . (English)
  6. ↑ Laura Weißmüller: On the death of Ingo Maurer - master lamp. Retrieved October 27, 2019 .
  7. ↑ a b prezi.com: Ingo Maurer based on one of his products
  8. ↑ Wolfgang Nagel: Ingo Maurer: The Magician of Light. On the official website of A&W (archive).
  9. ↑ Schwabing Art Prize awarded. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , April 4, 2019.
  10. ^ Rüdiger Liedtke: 111 places in Munich that you have to see. Emons Verlag, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-89705-892-7 .
personal data
SURNAME Mason, Ingo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German industrial designer
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Reichenau
DATE OF DEATH October 21, 2019
Place of death Munich