Elio Martinelli

Elio Martinelli was born on 19 November 1922, the only son of Plinio and his wife Emilia, one of Lucca's best-known milliners, who probably passed on the artistic vein to him.

After spending his childhood and adolescence in Lucca with the friends who would eventually become his lifelong friends, he pursued set design studies in Florence, where he eventually graduated. Elio discovered that his interests were different, being more creative than strictly technical, after taking over the family firm following the tragic death of his father Plinio.

As a result, he started working with a Lucca-based company to create interiors for public spaces. He started designing and making his own lamps for his projects because he was dissatisfied with the types of lighting fixtures that were readily accessible at the time (it was just after World War II). In a basement in Piazza Bernardini in Lucca, which was only accessible by a trapdoor and a stairway, and where the few tools required for a tiny production were installed with difficulty, Martinelli Luce was created. Elio referred to it as a 'laboratory'. Many of his concepts were formed in this place.

Elio Martinelli was brave, as were those who had supported him. His coworkers and a buddy gave him the small loan he needed to launch his business because banks had turned him down for loans. Elio Martinelli and Martinelli Luce rose to prominence internationally after the first Eurodomus in Genoa in 1966 and the meeting with Giò Ponti. In 1949, he married Anna, his lifelong partner and creative inspiration. Together, they started traveling through Italy and then Europe and participating in the most significant trade fairs of the time.

Elio Martinelli created a lot of lights during his career and learned new methods for molding methacrylate to create some of them. The most iconic lights of his manufacture were created specifically in plastic during the 1960s, a time when inventive and ground-breaking plastic materials first began to appear.

Attention to technology and novelty has always characterised Elio Martinelli's interest, not only in the materials in which the lamps were made, but also in the use of new light sources.

The classic light bulb, from the 1970s onwards, was increasingly replaced by halogen and metal halide lamps that led to a real revolution in the lighting of commercial spaces. It was in the early 1980s when Elio Martinelli designed his first technical fixtures collected in a specific catalogue called 'Sistemi'.

Emiliana, his daughter, joined the business during this time, initially concentrating primarily on the graphic aspect before transitioning to design. As we enter the 1990s, Martinelli Luce has a solidified position in the landscape of the businesses that produce lighting fixtures, expanding itself even further overseas and into the illumination of sizable commercial areas with contract-specific productions.

Elio Martinelli passed away on 21 October 2004 after an illness that had forced him in his last years to be often far away from that creature to which all his thoughts were directed.