Achille Castiglioni — Du design au ready-made — Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1985

Exhibition invitation / brochure
Offset print on folded card stock with colour photographic cover and red typographic interior
Centre Georges Pompidou, Galerie du CCI, Paris
Exhibition dates: 27 November 1985 – 3 February 1986; vernissage 26 November 1985, 18:00
Condition: very good; light handling wear, minor surface marks and age toning consistent with period paper ephemera

An original invitation brochure issued for Achille Castiglioni: du design au ready-made, presented at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in late 1985. The exhibition was organized through the Centre de Création Industrielle and formed part of a broader travelling project realized by the Consorzio Mostra Itinerante Castiglioni, with participation from Galerie Néotu for the Paris presentation.

The front cover uses a reduced graphic language of deep blue forms bounded by red bars, associated with the visual identity system developed by Swiss graphic designer Jean Widmer, whose work helped define the institutional language of the Pompidou during this period. The interior carries dense red typography with opening details and exhibition information in a sharply administrative register.

By 1985, Achille Castiglioni had already become one of the most influential figures in postwar industrial design. Rather than treating objects as isolated formal problems, Castiglioni frequently worked through adaptation, displacement, and everyday observation. The exhibition title — from design to readymade — quietly places his practice near Duchampian territory, where existing forms, found functions, and acts of selection become part of the design process.

Invitation, institutional graphic system, and object proposition collapse into a portable printed support.

Original period item. Shipping and handling included in listed price.