Willy Rizzo
(Italian, 1928–2013)
Biography
Willy Rizzo was an Italian photographer and furniture designer known for his portraits of princes, princesses, playboys, and starlets in the 1950s and 60s. Born on October 22, 1928 in Naples, Italy, he began shooting portraits at the age of 12 and in 1948, he was hired by Paris Match magazine, for whom he photographed the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Jane Fonda, Fred Astaire, Salvador Dalí, and Pablo Picasso, among others. He went on to launch a furniture line in Rome in 1966, inspired by Modernists such as Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. His inaugural collection included steel-banded travertine dining tables and bronze table lamps, and today many of his pieces are exhibited in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He became such a famous chronicler of the glamorous “jet set” of the 1950s, Rizzo was memorably immortalized as the paparazzo Walter Rizotto in Tintin creator Herge’s The Castafiore Emerald in 1963. He died on February 25, 2013 in Paris, France.
Willy Rizzo Artworks
Willy Rizzo
(1,003 results)
Attributed to Willy Rizzo
A pair of console tables, 1970–1979
Sale Date: April 2, 2008
Auction Closed
English (US)
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