Liisi Beckmann (7 December 1924 – 9 August 2004) was a Finnish designer and artist primarily active in Italy from the late 1950s to the late 1970s. Examples of her work are held in the collections of the

Moderna Museet Moderna Museet is a state museum for modern and contemporary art located on the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm, opened in 1958. In 2009, the museum opened Moderna Museet Malmö in Malmö. History The museum opened in Stockh ...

in Stockholm and the

Design Museum The Design Museum in Kensington, London, England, exhibits product, industrial, graphic, fashion, and architectural design. In 2018, the museum won the European Museum of the Year Award. The museum operates as a registered charity, and all fund ...

in Helsinki. Her work has also been exhibited at the

Rome Quadriennale The Rome Quadriennale ( Italian: La Q''uadriennale di Roma'', also called in English the ''Rome Quadrennial'') is the Italian national institution entrusted with the task of researching about and promoting Italian contemporary art. It is a foun ...

, the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

in New York, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and the Triennale Design Museum in Milan. Her most celebrated design was the Karelia chair, first produced by Zanotta in 1966.

Life and career

She was born Liisi Marjatta Meronen on her parents' farm in Kirvu on the

Karelian Isthmus The Karelian Isthmus (; ; ) is the approximately stretch of land situated between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga in northwestern Russia, to the north of the River Neva. Its northwestern boundary is a line from the Bay of Vyborg to the we ...

. The Meronen family was forced to evacuate when the Russians invaded and seized the territory at the outbreak of World War II. With their farm razed to the ground and unable to return to Karelia, the family built a new life in Virenoja, a village near

Orimattila Orimattila () is a town in Päijänne Tavastia regions of Finland, region, Finland. The southern part of Lahti is connected to the village of Pennala, which is located in the northern part of the Orimattila municipality. Its neighboring municipali ...

. She enrolled in the Helsinki School of Arts and Design on the milinary and clothing course, but unbeknownst to her father, also took courses at the

Academy of Fine Arts The following is a list of notable art schools. Accredited non-profit art and design colleges * Adelaide Central School of Art * Alberta College of Art and Design * Art Academy of Cincinnati * Art Center College of Design * The Art Institute ...

which occupied the same building. She married Hans Beckmann in 1946. Their early married life was spent between Helsinki, Virenoja, and

Lübeck Lübeck (; or ; Latin: ), officially the Hanseatic League, Hanseatic City of Lübeck (), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 220,000 inhabitants, it is the second-largest city on the German Baltic Sea, Baltic coast and the second-larg ...

in her husband's native Germany. The marriage was not a success and the couple soon began living apart. However, they did not divorce until 1957, and she retained his surname throughout her life. Beckmann moved to Milan in 1957 where she worked in the development studio of

La Rinascente ; ) is a high-end Italian department store chain that operates nine stores in Italy, including two flagship locations in Milan ( Piazza del Duomo) and Rome (Via del Tritone). The company was a member of the International Association of Depar ...

. She went on to design objects and furniture for several Italian firms, including the furniture company Zanotta, the glass company Vetreria Vistosi, the ceramics company Gabbianelli, and the metalware company Valenti. In 1966 she designed her most famous piece, the Karelia easy chair for Zanotta. Constructed in undulating forms of expanded

polyurethane foam Polyurethane foam is a solid polymeric foam based on polyurethane chemistry. As a specialist synthetic fibre, synthetic material with highly diverse applications, polyurethane foams are primarily used for thermal insulation and as a cushioning mat ...

with a glossy vinyl cover, it became one of Zanotta's cult classics. It was reissued by the company in 2007 and exhibited at Milan's Triennale Design Museum in 2016. In the late 1960s Beckmann settled in

Cassano d'Adda Cassano d'Adda (Milanese: ; Bergamasque: ) is a town and ''comune'' in the Metropolitan City of Milan, Lombardy, Italy, located on the right side of the Adda River. It is on the border of the Metropolitan City of Milan and the province of Bergamo ...

in the outskirts of Milan. She gradually withdrew from designing in the mid-1970s and devoted herself to painting and sculpture. During this period she had a solo exhibition at the Galleria di Naviglio in Milan and exhibited her sculptures ''Liszt'' and ''Marconi'' at the

. Another sculpture from this period, ''Homo Erectus'', is held in the

in Stockholm. Beckmann spent the last years of her life in Finland and died in Orimattila at the age of 79. A retrospective exhibition of her work was held at the Palazzo Berva in Cassano d'Adda in 2015.

Life and career

References

Further reading