People in Design – Obituary: death of Ingo Maurer
Lighting designer. Lighting artist. Lighting poet. Many names have been used to describe the designer Ingo Maurer, who recently passed away. It cannot be denied that his light installations and his approach to light engineering and presentation never failed to impress, with their special, often surprising elements. Born in 1932 on the island of Reichenau in Lake Constance, Maurer moved to New York in 1960 after studying commercial art. He suddenly found fame there in 1966 with his first lamp: “Bulb” – a table lamp in the shape of an oversized light bulb, which was added to the design collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1969 and is still being produced today. Other well-known works include the “Lucellino” lamp from 1992, decorated with handmade wings made of goose feathers, as well as sensational projects in public spaces, such as the lighting design of the Munich underground stations Westfriedhof (1998) and Münchner Freiheit (2009), or the recently completed installation “Silver Cloud” created for the conservatory in Munich’s Residenztheater. If you want to see more works by Ingo Maurer, they are on display at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. The installation “Pendulum” will adorn the atrium there until February 2020, and the “Ingo Maurer Intimate. Design or What?” exhibition will run from 15 November to 1 October 2020. Or you can visit the only Mauer Showroom in Europe at Kaiserstraße 47 in Munich, where more than 100 products, prototypes and individual pieces are on display over a 700 sqm area (there is another showroom in New York). Ingo Maurer died on 21 October 2019 in Munich at the age of 87.
