Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) was a Scottish architect, artist and designer, leading exponent of the Art Nouveau movement in the United Kingdom. He founds the group "The Four" together with Herbert McNair and his sisters Frances and Margarteh Macdonald, all part of his fellow students at the Glasgow School of Art, becoming the protagonists of the so-called "Glasgow School" which brings the European Art Nouveau to Great Britain and, at the same time, he contaminates it with a stylistic heritage strongly influenced by local traditions. Mackitosh's work, in which the new headquarters of the Glasgow School of Art and the famous Hill House stand out, is strongly soaked with Celtic symbolism and neo-Gothic sensibilities. An all-round designer, Mackintosh also loves to design the furnishings of his projects, played on the contrast between long straight lines and gentle curves. These include several seats with bold elongated backrests, still iconic and recognizable today. The furniture designed by Mackintosh comes back to life in the 1970s, when the Italian Cassina includes them in its famous collection designed by the Masters of contemporary architecture, renowned for its rigorous philological precision. Mackintosh, who at the beginning of the twentieth century has also a decisive influence on the birth of the Viennese Secession style, finally spent the last years of his life in France, devoting himself mainly to painting.