Giandomenico Belotti

Giandomenico Belotti (1922-2004) was an Italian designer and architect remembered above all for his fruitful collaboration with the Alias company and in particular for the Spaghetti chair (1979), the Bergamo-based company's debut product in the furniture sector and so popular that it was included in the permanent collection of the MoMA in New York. A native of Bergamo, Belotti studied architecture in Milan for many years, interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War and by his professional practice during the 1950s at various Milanese studios, including that of the engineer Franco Scolari and the architect Guglielmo Ulrich, where he mainly worked on the design of private homes built in Milan. Having finally obtained a degree in architecture in Venice in 1961, Belotti then worked in the 1960s and 1970s on various projects concentrated mainly around the Bergamo area, including the house with adjoining showroom of the Baleri family in Albino (1970), today known by the brand Abitare Baleri. Enrico Baleri had drawn Belotti to a chair designed in 1962 for a hotel in Marina di Massa, the shapes of which would be perfected over the years until they became the basis of his famous Spaghetti, produced in the late 1970s by the newly founded Alias, which had been founded shortly before by Belotti himself in partnership with Baleri and Carlo Forcolini. Between the 1980s and 1990s Belotti designed several other seats for Alias and garden furniture for Foppapedretti (including the successful Plen Air collection, 1995).