Cesare Leonardi (3 June 1935 – 4 February 2021) was an Italian architect.

Biography

Leonardi attended the University of Florence, where he was taught by Adalberto Libera, , and . He graduated in 1970. From 1959 to 1960, he was an apprentice in the studio of in

Udine Udine ( , ; fur, Udin; la, Utinum) is a city and ''comune'' in north-eastern Italy, in the middle of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, between the Adriatic Sea and the Alps (''Alpi Carniche''). Its population was 100,514 in 2012, 176,000 with t ...

before opening his own studio with Franca Stagi in 1963. Some of their works ended up in the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, and Vitra Design Museum in

Weil am Rhein Weil am Rhein (High Alemannic: ''Wiil am Rhii'') is a German town and commune. It is on the east bank of the River Rhine, and extends to the point at which the Swiss, French and German borders meet. It is the most southwesterly town in Germany an ...

. Photography allowed him to document, investigate, and plan his future blueprints for construction. He moved to the Viale Emilio Po studio in

Modena Modena (, , ; egl, label=Emilian language#Dialects, Modenese, Mòdna ; ett, Mutna; la, Mutina) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) on the south side of the Po Valley, in the Province of Modena in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern I ...

in 1990, which now houses his complete archives. After 2000, he primarily devoted himself to photography, sculpture, and painting. In 2011, the Superintendent for Archival Heritage in

Emilia-Romagna egl, Emigliàn (man) egl, Emiglièna (woman) rgn, Rumagnòl (man) rgn, Rumagnòla (woman) it, Emiliano (man) it, Emiliana (woman) or it, Romagnolo (man) it, Romagnola (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title ...

said that his archive was a "particularly important cultural asset". Cesare Leonardi died in Modena on 4 February 2021, at the age of 85, from a long illness complicated by COVID-19.

References

1935 births 2021 deaths University of Florence alumni 20th-century Italian architects Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in Emilia-Romagna {{Italy-architect-stub