Sampei floor light and Rail lamp by Davide Groppi, curated alongside furniture and design objects from Volumnia’s collection.
Pictured: Moon pendant light by Davide Groppi at the exhibition’s entrance.
The Italian lighting designer reflects on four decades of ‘inventing’ light as a language beyond form and function.
Is Davide Groppi a lighting designer, or an artist who works with light? His first major retrospective exhibition, Un’ora di luce (‘One hour of light’), makes a case for his acclaim as an ‘inventor of light’: a creator in obsessive pursuit of truth and beauty beyond a formal design language. Curated inside Piacenza’s Chiesa di Sant’Agostino for this year’s edition of Volumnia, the exhibition offers a glimpse into Groppi’s four-decade career dedicated to exploring the aesthetic dimensions of light, as observed across his notable collections of lamps and lighting products.
Curated by Marco Sammicheli (Triennale Milano’s curator for design, fashion and crafts, and director of the Italian Design Museum), Un’ora di luce is a spatial journey framed through Groppi’s intimate lens. Occupying the Renaissance church-turned-gallery’s central nave, his most recognised lamp and lighting designs—the rechargeable TeTaTeT table lamp (2013), the wire-suspended OHM light (2019), and the cinema-inspired Set floor lamp (2025), among them—are cast in immersive ‘utopias’ that explore light as an abstract and poetic protagonist. These episodes, including ‘Presenze’ and ‘Le luci del mondo’, showcase Groppi’s designs beyond their formal and functional parameters, presenting them as enigmatic objects within a spatial narrative that spans past, present and future.
“I can’t design a lamp that purely looks beautiful or produces a beautiful light. For me, that is not the most important thing. Yes, a lamp must be functional, but it must also tell a story,” Groppi reflects.
Whether observed in a residential space in dialogue with other furnishings, or as a design statement in a commercial environment, Groppi’s lamps and lights are instantly recognisable for their striking sculptural minimalism. They are defined by a simplicity of form balanced with a subtle conceptual element of surprise, inspired by everything from photography sets and readymades to children’s toys and optical illusions. Often, the quality of Groppi’s light announces itself before the physical object; continuous, projected, diffused, or simply pure. This exhibition context emphasises the ease with which his designs traverse the formal and informal, the refined and the expressive, the functional and the aesthetic. They appear as more of an abstract proposition, and less as a product we might have previously seen in a showroom or living space.
Italian lighting designer Davide Groppi
Pictured: Umasi ceiling light by Davide Groppi
The retrospective charts an evolution in Groppi’s design approach, from his earlier, more figurative lamps such as Tropical (1989) and Baloo (1993) to more recent designs like the symbolic Stop light (2024), which reimagines the classic floor lamp. The designer also presents a new limited-edition Vera light, created for Volumnia: a table lamp with an aluminium base, transparent glass cone and hologram bulb that appears when switched on. Un’ora di luce concludes with a selection of Groppi’s lights curated alongside furniture, ceramics, and other design objects from Volumnia’s collection, which includes pieces by Gio Ponti, Osvaldo Borsani, and Gianfranco Frattini.
While Groppi’s recent designs demonstrate a mastery of his signature aesthetic language—minimal, sculptural, poetic—the designer’s fascination with using light to evoke stories and emotion has remained constant since he began designing for his eponymous brand in the late ‘80s: “I think I have remained innovative after four decades because my sources of inspiration are so diverse. I am always referring to art, architecture, literature, cinema and mathematics. This is what shapes my ‘stories’, both aesthetically and conceptually. I also work obsessively, and being in this state means new ideas are always coming to me,” he says.
The Quasi luce installation
Un’ora di luce installation view
Volumnia, a design gallery and platform founded in 2018 by gallerist Enrica De Micheli, provides an evocative framework for Groppi’s retrospective. Set within the restored church, where art, design and culture now mingle, the exhibition draws visitors into a series of dramatic contrasts between light and shadow, historical narratives and contemporary aesthetics, and Groppi’s unexpectedly intuitive design lens gradually reveals itself through the experience. For him, light has always been an essential means of expression, just as words are for a poet and paint is for a painter.
“My designs are a direct reflection of me, of my soul. When someone engages with my work, they engage with me, authentically. I have never designed for the purpose of commercial ambition or to cater to a global market’s trends or preferences, and that won’t change,” Groppi says. “I am my lamps.”
Davide Groppi ‘Un’ora di luce’ (One hour of light) | 26 March – 26 May 2026, Volumnia, Piacenza
Pictured: Vera table lamp by Davide Groppi
The post In Conversation | Davide Groppi appeared first on est living | exceptional living.