Ettore Sottsass was born in Innsbruck, Austria in 1917 and grew up in Milan where his father worked as an Architect.  Architecture was in his blood.  He went to the Politecnico de Torino in Turin, Italy and graduated in 1939 as an Archiect.  Surviving military service in WWII and a concentration camp in the former Yugoslavia, he returned home in 1948 and set up his architectural and industrial design studio in Milan.

Born in Paris in 1898, he was the son of a famous artist and colorist.  He designed very creative and original pieces of furniture which he loved to enhance with mirrors in all their forms, beveled and etched!  He was also a very successful as an art and antiques dealer, interior designer and event planner in the art world.  He had a gllery on the Rue Faubourg-St-Honore. 
His creations focused on light, a certain whimsical magic that spoke of the past but evoked the future.  We are luck at Modernism.com to have many examples of his work offered by our great dealers!

Joe Colombo was born in Milan, Italy on July 30th, 1930.   He started out wanting to learn art and sculputre,  studying at the Brera Academy of Fine Art.  He was part of the Avant Garde in the 1950's especially the "Nuclear Movement", designing all sorts of underground living spaces in response to the growing fears of the nuclear bomb.  Also in the 1950's he studied Architecture and In 1962 he opened his own studio in Milan designing architecture and furniture. In 1964 he designed the interior of a hotel in Sardinia.

César Pelli was born in Argentina in 1926.  He attended the University of Tucuman, earning a diploma in Architecture.   Small world, as many other Architests and Designers, his path crossed that of Eero Saarinen.  He served as project manager including the TWA Terminal at JFK.  In 1977 he became Dean of the Yale University School of Architecture and founded Cesar Pelli and Associates.   He has designed some of the tallest buildings in the world including the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Along with fashion designer and friend Issey Miyake, architects Arata Isozaki and Tadao Ando, and film-maker Akira Kurosawa, Kuramata belonged to the remarkable generation of talented young Japanese who transformed the way that Japan was viewed by the world. All of them were born just before the outbreak of the second world war and grew up under the grip of an authoritarian militarist dictatorship that demanded obedience and conformity.

Affortunato Gori...or...Affortunato Gory...Fortunato Gori...or...Fortunato Gory Gory altered his name from Fortunato Gori when he moved from Florence to Paris at the turn of the last century. There is some confusion since he inter-changed first and last names often, both with the changed version and the original version. Affortunato Gory (Italian, fl. 1895-1925). Born in Florence, Affortunato Gory initially studied at the city's Accademia di Belle Arti under Augusto Rivalta.

Cini Boeri was born in Milan, Italy in 1923.  She studied at the Polytechnic in Milan and graduated in 1951.  She worked at the Gio Ponti Studios with Zanuso and in 1963 she opened her own Studio in Milan.
Her work is very well exhibited at Museums all around the world.  She also received a Lifetime Accomplishments award from the Italian Cultural Institute in Los Angeles in 2008.

In the Pittsburgh Gazette on January 11, 1952 there was an article under “News from Chicago” titled “Local Boy” Designs Furniture Using a Variety of Skills.  Harold M. Schwartz was born in Ambridge and moved to Pittsburgh.  He went to Schenley High School and to the New York School of the Applied Fine Arts where he won a scholarship to study in France.