Collecting 60 chairs in 60 years is not just an exhibition: it is the testimony of Vico Magistretti's declared passion for chairs.
He admits it himself in an interview from 2003: "I have a somewhat shameful passion for chairs. I believe it is because it is the most difficult thing, it forgives nothing. It is difficult to be happy with a chair."

It is a well-known and cultivated obsession: already in 1980, from an idea of his friend Enrico Baleri, Vico organizes his own "solo show" at the Studio Marconi in Milan, Twenty years, twenty chairs. The title is simple, effective, and it also works in London the following year, when with a small touch-up it becomes Twenty-one years, twenty-one chairs for the Designers' Saturday.

And today the Vico Magistretti Foundation museum studio relaunches with Sixty chairs in sixty years. The exhibition also originates from here, but it is born, above all and as always, from the Magistretti Studio archive. Luca Poncellini, the curator of the exhibition, has practically moved in: he has read and reread letters, minutes of agreements, faxes, press releases; he has studied patent dossiers and photos of prototypes and models; he has examined drawings and deciphered notes. And thanks to this meticulous and in-depth work, Vico's design lines - the design concept, the redesign of tradition, the autobiographical inspiration - have become the story of an entire career through a single typology: the chair.

The exhibition unfolds in two paths: a timeline of original drawings and photographic reproductions of over sixty chairs - sixty-six to be precise, too many for the small museum studio... - designed by Magistretti in his sixty-year career. And then a dozen, just about, chairs to use and try, and as many notebooks full of the stories of each chair: insights, collaborations, corrections, rethinking, productive challenges, and even some legal issues.