ICO PARIS
(Palermo 1916 - Como 1996)

Domenico Parisi, called Ico, was born in Palermo on 23 September 1916 to Sicilian parents, then already residing in Piedmont. In 1925 the Parisi family moved to Como where Ico, in 1936, graduated as a building expert and carried out an apprenticeship at the Terragni studio. Here he has the opportunity to meet and meet personalities of Como architecture and art such as Cattaneo, Lingeri, Radice, Rho, Persico and Sartoris. Passionate about cinema and photography, he realizes, at the request of Terragni, the photographic images of the Casa del Fascio. Discharged from the front in 1943, he returned to Como and resumed the design activity, mainly dealing with the creation of individual furnishings, exhibition set-ups and interior architecture. Luisa Aiani collaborates with him, whom he will marry in 1947 and with whom he will open the studio La Ruota, a place of design but also a place of art, exhibition and culture. increasingly prolific in both architecture and design. He designs furniture, first in a single piece with Brianza artisans and, later for industrial production, with companies such as Cassina and numerous objects of decorative art such as ceramics and glass.The end of the 50s marks a precise turning point in his design research . With Containers, created in collaboration with the sculptor Francesco Somaini and presented for the first time at the Salone del Mobile in Milan in 60, Parisi begins a new path of investigation aimed at defining a utopian-existential idea of ​​living. of his design and existential research is between 1968 and 1974, with the “Operation Arcevia”, addressed in a choral and interdisciplinary way and aimed at planning an entire community. The work was presented as part of the 1976th Venice Biennale and subsequently exhibited at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome (76). From this highly utopian socio-urban experience, subsequent graphic research derives, the subject of countless group exhibitions. and personal. He died in Como on December 1979, 19.