There are no better words than those of his friend Stefano Boeri - "He illuminated the world with Artemide" - to remember Ernesto Gismondi, founder and president of one of the lighting brands that made Italian design great, who passed away a few days after completing 89 years old, who had celebrated on Christmas Eve.
Born in Sanremo on 25 December 1931, married to Carlotta de Bevilacqua, vice president of the group, immediately after graduating in Aeronautical Engineering at the Milan Polytechnic and in Missile Engineering at the Higher School of Engineering in Rome. Gismondi - who was called 'the engineer' - from the early 1960s devoted himself to the design and production of lighting fixtures, founding with the designer Sergio Mazza Studio Artemide Sas, from which the Artemide Group later developed, which is still based in Pregnana Milanese. Under his leadership, Artemide has become a major player in the design lighting sector, a role that has earned him awards such as the Compasso d'Oro Lifetime Achievement Award (1994) and the European Design Prize (1997). "It is precisely to people like Ernesto Gismondi - writes the mayor of Milan Giuseppe Sala - that we owe the development of Milanese design as a synonym of Italian Life Style all over the world".