Henry Fuermann Photograph

Drawing for Goodyear Pavilion

September 14, 2001 – December 29, 2001

Born to poverty in 1888 in rural Italy, Alfonso Iannelli became Chicago’s great modernist commercial artist in the early 20th century. He started sculpting by the age of 12. His illustrations at age 26 rivaled those of Vienna’s Gustav Klimt. And by 1915, Frank Lloyd Wright was passing off original Iannelli designs as his own.

Orpheum Poster.

Design for Sunbeam

His death in 1965 ended a design career that had marked his fiftieth anniversary as a legend in Chicago.

Iannelli produced his first solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago before he was 40, proving his prolific talent for the design of furniture, packaging and appliances. Working day and night, his studio generated designs for pavilions, rides and entrances for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. And for four decades manufacturers made millions from the sale of streamlined toasters, blenders and fountain pens designed by Iannelli.

His productivity, like his talent, seemed limitless.

ArchiTech Gallery presents a special exhibition and sale of seminal design drawings from Alfonso Iannelli’s personal archives, spanning the breadth of his extensive career.

Included are original 1910 vaudeville posters, murals and sculptures from his Art Institute exhibitions, pavilion designs for A Century of Progress, as well as dozens of architectural and consumer product designs.