GLI AMICI PECORA Pouf

Ever dreamed of being the main character in a fairy tale? Set in an enchanted scenario once upon a time, surrounded by fantastic creatures who become friends in times of need and come to the aid of heroes and heroines in search of their happy ending.

Gli Amici by Meritalia® is a design made up of eleven “characters”, each depicting a fantastic animal borrowed from the world of illustrated fairy tales. These 'friends' band together in different combinations to form imaginative and comfortable seats, transforming any space they inhabit: from a domestic interior to a fantastic interior.

The creator of Gli Amici is the radical Gaetano Pesce, who declared: "I have always loved animals very much, even the less noble ones. I have always admired them, especially the non–violent and kinder ones. Their different characters and languages have often pushed me to think and try to understand better." 

Meritalia® has breathed life into a comfortable seat with the appearance of eleven fantastic creatures: a long seat turned goldfish; pouffes turned canaries, elephants, sheep and bonobos. Ordinary backrests become mullet fish, pigs, dogs, bears or exotic toucans; and among them also a curious man. Eleven modules, different in shape and decoration; friends who inhabit the room and come together, to give it life and character, to live new stories.

Each module is supported by a solid wood and steel structure, on which different shapes in expanded polyurethane are modelled into the radical zoomorphic sculptures created by Pesce. The digital printing on resistant and high quality cotton reproduces the drawings by Gaetano Pesce himself, with a style that recalls the illustrations of children classics, and reproduces the features of the animals with light strokes and vivid colours.

Gaetano Pesce's multifaceted and polyhedral personality motivates his fame as a designer, artist, and architect. Through his work, Pesce has profoundly impacted the landscape of contemporary design, navigating a diverse career that spans architecture, art, furniture design, and sculptural works. "My career is not monolithic, but fragmented," this is how Pesce defined his journey, which began in the late 1950s and continued until 2024. Far from being linear, his path has been marked by bold eclecticism, leading him to engage with various design disciplines while demonstrating a penchant for experimentation and playfulness. Pesce challenged both aesthetic and functional conventions, creating objects with the immediate power to become unforgettable.

Since the early 1960s, Pesce has played a pivotal role within the radical design movement, characterised by an iconoclastic vision, aimed at breaking with the conventions of positivist modernism and exploring new creative possibilities. Through relentless innovation, artistic exploration and profoundly radical intellectual dynamism, Pesce emerged as a beacon of change, reshaping the landscape of contemporary design.

W 38, D 67, H 48 cm; 7 Kg