The artistic work of Alessi and Dalí, awakened from a fifty-year dream, is both a testament to the brand's knowledge in metalworking and the eccentric genius. Even the name of the statue is confusing: Obget Inutile, meaning useless in Italian. However, a useless thing has never been made of silver and especially never carried such a strong artistic character as this object!
In a pragmatic approach, Obget Inutile is a single folded sheet of metal that holds a golden comb ending in loose hooks, held together by a wooden clothespin. But who can remain practical when looking at this creation?! And that's exactly the point: this object balances today as virtuosically on the border between design and art as Alberto Alessi and Salvador Dalí imagined it fifty years ago.
DESIGN HEROES IN THE BORING FACTORY
As a small child, Alberto Alessi thought his grandfather's factory was gray, dark and terribly boring - this is what he told the New York Times in an interview. Alessi owes a lot to the fact that this impression did not change even as an adult. Alberto walked through the factory gates the day after graduating from law school and immediately began working on his mold-breaking project. We are in the 1970s, when simple but high-quality household items and kitchen utensils came off the production lines. However, Alberto was not driven by coffee makers or metal trays, he was interested in something completely different: in his project called Alessi d'Aprés, he gathered world-famous artists around him with the aim of repositioning Alessi with the great masters of design: transforming the ordinary factory into a Design Factory.
WAY TO THE POOR MUSTACHE
Salvador Dalí was the influencer of his time when social media meant something completely different. He was present, provoked, influenced, it was impossible not to pay attention to him. The world of the surrealist artist fit perfectly into the broad ideas of Alberto Alessi, and he contacted him. Dalí asked him to send something as a starting point for the project, and Alberto found a three-meter sheet of steel to be the most suitable for it. When he visited the maestro in the spring of 1973, he found himself face to face with the work: a fallen angel on crutches wrapped in sheet steel, stylishly held in place by two clothespins. And there was also a huge gold comb ending in hooks, also wrapped in sheet metal... The young Alessi was impressed by Dalí's creation, although we can learn from a later report that years later he thought the artist was just playing a joke on him (which he was also famous for ). Alberto had already acquired fifty thousand salmon hooks from a factory in Oslo before his father stopped the artistic project. He did not take kindly to experimentation, which, even if it was not clearly successful, at least from a commercial point of view, we now know for sure that it was a major milestone in the life of the company. The approach itself: openness to the new, something unseen before, has been an important attribute of Alessi ever since.
TIME AND SONG ARE EACH OTHER ALLIES
Quite a few projects were realized, but Dalí's work was not among them: his sketches ended up in Alessi's most hidden drawer and remained there for fifty years. Until Alberto Alessi took it out, dusted it off and put it into production: a limited edition collection of 99 pieces was made, which was joined by 3 artist proofs. The sculptures were cast from 925 silver and 24 carat gold-plated brass, and the objects are decorated with the monogram of Salvador Dalí in addition to the Alessi logo. One of the numbered copies of Obget Inutile was also included in the Pop-Up Store of the MaxCity Furnishing Shopping Center.
