Designed and produced in Munich for almost sixty years, his lighting fixtures follow a guiding principle that combines technology, humor, and poetry. His creations are unique pieces to live in and cherish.

Although Ingo Maurer passed away in 2019, the team he assembled continues to carry on the spirit of his boundless imagination. The master of light asked each of his collaborators to collect objects they found beautiful, so they could work surrounded by these inspiring pieces that fueled their creativity. "The combination of all these objects created the idea," recalls Michel Sempels, who worked alongside the designer for over thirty years.

It all began with a brilliant idea, brought to life in 1966 by Bulb, a light bulb within a light bulb, which quickly achieved iconic design status. Ingo Maurer often recounted his childhood memory of being fascinated by the light dancing on the waves when he accompanied his father fishing. Later, as a graphic designer, he began sketching lamps, focusing on their form, until he realized that "the light bulb was a fantastic symbiosis of industry and poetry."

Following his own intuition, he then focused on light as a sensation and an emotion. In response to the success of the Bulb, which entered the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the German designer founded his company in Munich, where prototypes are still created, and where pieces are handcrafted and customized by a team of about sixty people. Michel Sempels, head of events and special projects for the company, summarizes its credo as follows: “A light fixture must be a pleasure to behold. It must produce beautiful light, but that's not enough: if the object doesn't convey emotion, it's a failure. It must surprise and bring a smile.”

Created in 1994, Porca Miseria! perfectly illustrates this approach. More than just a pendant light, the piece is a fantastic, expanding light object. Four people are needed to assemble this fixture, composed of broken porcelain serving pieces and cutlery, frozen in a cinematic explosion. Light filters through the levitating shards, playing with their translucent material and sculpting them as it passes. Only 10 bespoke fixtures are produced each year, tailored to the space they will occupy and personalized to the taste of their future owners, who can add their own personal touch.

With Ingo Maurer, emotion is conveyed through play. "Light has a very significant impact on our daily lives. Many people don't realize that the light around them is bad," stated the designer, who sought to "create a harmony between space and light that pleases people, that makes them happy." This need for lightness is also expressed in a striking creation from 1992, his winged Lucellino lamp, a fusion of the Italian words luce, meaning light, and uccellino, meaning "little bird."

Constantly reinventing itself, integrating LED technology that has enabled the creation of monumental works, and playing with the colors of light, the company continually takes on new challenges. Among the most memorable is the lighting of the Atomium in Brussels, built in 1958, for which luminous objects nearly 2 meters in diameter were created, true to the futuristic spirit of the site. The teams also held their breath when a helicopter was needed to suspend a Golden Ribbon in the monumental stairwell of a beautiful Italian residence. This was a variation of the 1997 Paragaudi, the first 5-meter-long model designed for Casa Botines, built by Antoni Gaudí in León, Spain. For this installation, even more than for others, the model made the difference, so that the double wall of golden aluminum concealing the lights, shaped by hand like an old-fashioned car body, seemed to float between the floors, blown and rolled by the air current.

Ingo Maurer's creations do more than simply interact with the spaces they illuminate; they are also always closely connected to their users. Several Munich subway stations have been adorned with his lighting, following this guiding principle. To adapt to the existing fluorescent tubes in one of them, the designer and his team conceived a series of domes measuring 5 meters in diameter—compared to the 1,80 meters listed in the company's catalog—once again employing a delicate automotive technique. Believing that poor lighting affects people's moods, Ingo Maurer chose blue—a spiritual color he considers unparalleled—to adorn the domes and walls of this station. His aim was to free passersby from the concrete realities of their daily lives, at least for the duration of their time in this now unique space.

From the real chicken egg transformed into the Reality lamp, from which a delicate ray of light filters through a geometric slit, to the monumental Broken Egg radiating light through its cracks, Ingo Maurer enjoys the challenge of changing scales and is equally adept at imbuing the intimacy of apartments with poetry and creating a spectacle with prestigious public and private commissions. Whether it's a ceiling of suspended candles evoking a starry sky or a moving cloud of 3,500 silver leaves shimmering under the light, the range of Ingo Maurer's creations is limited only by the imagination. "An idea can spring from anywhere," the artist said. Conceptual, spectacular regardless of their size, and always subtle, the lighting systems bearing his name transform ordinary light into enchantment.

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