Riccardo Dalisi Exhibition, London
Spazio Leone and Oscar Piccolo present the first-ever UK exhibition dedicated to the visionary Italian architect, designer, and artist Riccardo Dalisi (1931–2022).
Following his recent passing, the exhibition celebrates the extraordinary breadth, originality, and radical spirit of his multifaceted work.
The exhibition offers a sweeping journey through Dalisi’s imaginative world - from his groundbreaking community workshops with children in Naples to his experimental use of humble materials; from architecture and furniture to his iconic reinterpretations of the Neapolitan coffee pot; from large-scale urban installations to poetic reimaginings of Mediterranean mythologies.
Twice awarded the prestigious Compasso d’Oro, Dalisi was one of the most unconventional and influential figures in postwar Italian design. His career defied categorisation, blending architecture, art, and craftsmanship with a uniquely playful, humanistic vision.
Through a rich selection of drawings, sketches, furniture, objects, books, sculptures, paintings, photographs, archival materials, and films, the exhibition reveals the revolutionary scope of the “Dalisi method” - a way of thinking as much as making.
September 26–October 26, 2025
Monday–Friday: by appointment Saturday & Sunday: Open 10 AM – 4 PM
Please enquire for available works hi@spazioleone.com
Riccardo Dalisi (1931–2022)
Born in Potenza on May 1st 1931, until 2007 he held the chair of Architectural Design at the Faculty of Architecture of the Federico II University of Naples. At the same faculty he was director and lecturer of the School of Specialization in Industrial Design. In the seventies, together with Ettore Sottsass, Alessandro Mendini, Andrea Branzi and others, he was among the founders of Global Tools, a counter-school of architecture and design that brought together the groups and people who in Italy covered the most advanced area of the so-called “radical architecture” around the magazines “Casabella” and “Spazio e società”. The works born in those years are now part of the permanent collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Frac Centre in Orléans museum Madre di Napoli. Always engaged in social work (the experience of working in the neighborhood with the children of the Rione Traiano, with the elderly of the Casa del Popolo of Ponticelli in the 70s and, in recent years, the commitment with the young people of the Rione Sanità of Naples, of the Territorial Center Il Mammuth of Scampia and of the Criminal Institute for minors of Nisida remains fundamental), he has combined research and teaching in the field of architecture and design, approaching more and more artistic expression as the direct way of his life. In his expressive research, which ranges in the mythical, the archaic, the sacred, the poor materials (iron, copper, brass) are used with loving craftsmanship. In 1981 he won the Compasso d’Oro award for research on the Neapolitan coffee maker. In the last thirty years he has dedicated himself intensely to the creation of an increasingly articulated and fruitful relationship between university research, architecture, design, sculpture, painting, art and craftsmanship, keeping at the center the purpose of human development through dialogue and the potential for creativity that emanates from it. In 2009, after extensive preparatory research, he presented, in collaboration with the Triennale di Milano and the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti di Milano, the first edition of the Compasso di Latta Award, an initiative for new research in the field of design in the name of human support, eco-compatibility and degrowth. In 2014 he won the second Compasso d’Oro for his social commitment.