He loved the light bulb: The German designer was renowned for his pioneering and timeless lamps and light installations, including the iconic "Bulb" from 1966.
His very last work was presented in Munich just two days before he died. For more than 50 years, Ingo Maurer created timeless lamps and light installations. We present some impressive highlights from his work.
Image: Ingo Maurer
Light bulb within a light bulb
He owed his breakthrough as a designer to the "Bulb." With this work, Ingo Maurer created a monument to the light bulb in 1966. He saw "Bulb" as more than just a means of illuminating a room, namely "the ideal symbiosis of poetry and technology." Manufactured from hand-blown Murano glass, the iconic design is still a hit to this day.
Image: Ingo Maurer
Winged light
In 1992, Ingo Maurer lent wings to the light bulb. This lamp, called "Lucellino," also features his trademark light bulb, and keeps the electric wires as decorative elements.
Image: Getty Images/H. Maegerstaedt
Clear lines
Ingo Maurer didn't limit himself to light bulbs. Always keeping up with modern trends, he integrated new developments in his designs, as can be seen here with his "YaYaHo." This classic design of the year 1984 has movable halogen lamps attached to metal wires.
Image: Ingo Maurer
Light in the underground
When you take the underground line U1 in Munich to the stop Westfriedhof, you are immersed in a sea of colors. Huge cupola-shaped lampshades, almost four meters wide, hang above the platform, coloring it in yellow, red and blue. Ingo Maurer created this light installation in 1998.
Brussel's Atomium was restored in 2006. "After reflecting a lot about the project, I decided to use my very first impressions in the space as a starting point — a strong emotional experience, the feeling of being in a space craft," said Maurer, who designed the lighting in the space. "In the Atomium, people still want to fly to the moon."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/E. Metz
More than just an installation
Some of the light artist's designs were revealed at industry fairs. He is pictured with his lamp "Delirium Yum" at the "Light + Building" fair in Frankfurt in 2006. His company, well known for its unusual presentations, has been present at fairs since the 1970s. Maurer also opened a showroom in New York in 1999, followed by another one in Munich in 2009.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Dedert
From Munich to New York
This snowflake made of stainless steel was created by Ingo Maurer in his Munich-based studio for UNICEF. Consisting of 16,000 crystal prisms, the seven-meter-wide "UNICEF Crystal Snowflake" has been illuminating New York's Fifth Avenue every holiday season since 2004.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Ingo Maurer GmbH
Natural elements
This huge pendulum designed by Ingo Maurer can be admired in the atrium of Munich's Pinakothek der Moderne. For this work, Maurer was inspired by the harmonious form of an egg combined with the quiet movement of a pendulum. The three-meter-high work of aluminium was handmade and extensively polished.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Görlich
The very last work
Two days before Maurer died on October 21, the 12-meter-long "Silver Cloud" was revealed in the foyer of Munich's Residenz Theater. The artwork consists of 3,000 silver-plated sheets. "We are grateful that we were able to realize this project together with Ingo Maurer, who worked on it until shortly before his death, and we will keep his memory alive," the theater wrote on its internet site.
Image: Simon Koy
9 images1 | 9
More than 50 years ago, Ingo Maurer was staring at the ceiling from his hotel bed in Venice when, having had a few glasses of red wine, he developed a fascination for the 15-watt light bulb staring back at him. "Sometimes things get more intense when you're not quite sober, so I sat down right away and drew my Bulb lamp," the light designer told German weekly Zeit in 2014.
He said that he crossed over to the island of Murano the very next day to have his design made by the glassblowers: a glass sculpture in the form of a light bulb — with a light bulb inside it. A design classic was born.
Three years after he created it in 1966, the lamp was added to the design collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Born in 1932, Ingo Maurer grew up on the island of Reichenau in Lake Constance in southern Germany and spent a lot of time with his fisherman father on the water. "I would lie on my back in a boat and look dreamily into the sky," he once told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper. The reflection of the sun rays on the water left a lasting impression on him.
After World War II, Maurer trained as a typesetter in Konstanz and then studied commercial graphics in Munich. In the 1960s, he worked in New York and San Francisco and then returned to Germany to found his own company, Design M, in 1966 — which was later renamed Ingo Maurer GmbH. Here he developed his pioneering lamps and light designs.
Mauer soon became known as the "poet of light."
Pure, timeless light
"Bad light makes you unhappy," Maurer once said. He repeatedly proclaimed his love for the light bulb, which became his trademark. While other designers saw it as something to keep hidden under the lampshade, Maurer centered his designs on the bulb itself.
In the 1980s, Maurer also set new standards by working with low-voltage systems and hanging halogen lights on metal cables. In the 1990s, he created light installations for public spaces such as underground stations in Munich, or for Brussels' famous landmark, the Atomium.
His last work was revealed only two days before his death: Silver Cloud, a 12-meter-long installation of 3,000 silver leaves in the foyer of the Munich Residenz Theater.
Following his death on October 21, tributes have poured in from around the world for the revolutionary industrial designer.
