Gino Sarfatti

Gino Sarfatti, the eldest of three brothers, he was born to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, into a family of the wealthy commercial middle class. After classical studies, he attended the University of Aeronautical Engineering in Genoa. 
In 1935 the family moved to Milan where, after an experience in the sale of art glass, he worked both with his own small company and with the Lumen company: on his writing paper he defined his commitment as rational lighting.  He hangs out with Franco Albini, Lucio Fontana, Lica and Albe Steiner. In February 1939 he founded Arteluce Società Anonima A.L. with some representatives of the Milanese company and became General Manager. The company's corporate purpose is lighting  fixtures, luminous applications, furnishing components as well as the study and creation of furnishings.
In 1939 it rented the shop in Corso Littorio, then Corso Matteotti, in which it will remain until 1962.  After the first bombings on Milan, the family and the production activity are decentralized near Lecco, therefore, to escape racial persecution, he has to expatriate to Switzerland, where he lives in a nunnery in Neggio, near Lugano. Arteluce, during the war  years, remained active, within the limits permitted by the period, entrusted to a prosecutor. 
In 1946, upon his return, he opened a small workshop in via Cesena, in an apartment readapted under his temporary home and in the adjacent space, covered by a shed and the activity is immediately significant: the first naval supply dates back to 1949. 
In the same 1949 he enters the new factory, in via Bellinzona, 48, acquired with funds from his wife's family and which will remain the company's sole production site. 
In 1950 he founded in Rome, with a brother of his wife, the company ArCon - Contemporary Furniture, which sells brands of excellence in furniture and was immediately successful, even in the press, until he sold his stake for family reasons. 
In 1962 the owners asked him to leave the shop in Corso Matteotti, 12, for his own commercial needs and therefore he opened a new large store, in via della Spiga, 23, with a project by the architect. Vittoriano Vigano. He won many international awards, among which, in 1954 and 1955, the Compasso d'oro, with the 559 and 1055 models. 
In December 1973, the year in which he won the gold medal at the XV Triennale, he sold the company, now no longer operational.  He died on March 6, 1985, struck by a cerebral stroke.