Maurer, Ingo

Ingo Maurer trained as a graphic designer until 1958. Then Ingo Maurer went to the US in 1960, where he worked as a graphic designer and designer. In 1966 Ingo Maurer returned to Germany and began to concentrate exclusively on lighting design. In Munich Ingo founded Design M that same year, a firm specializing in producing lighting and developing lighting concepts. Influenced by Pop art, which he had encountered in America, Ingo Maurer's first lighting design, "Bulb" (1966), assumed the form of an outsize light bulb of chromium-plated metal and handblown glass.

It was not long before Ingo Maurer became famous worldwide with his innovative designs for lighting. The naked light bulb figures prominently in Ingo Maurer's designs: his tribute to Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor of the light bulb. In 1969 Ingo Maurer designed "No fuss" and, in 1979 the elegantly simple "Savoie" lamp. In 1980, however, Ingo Maurer deliberately reverted to his first lighting success to produce "Bulb Bulb", which can be either a pendent lamp or a floor lamp and is also in the form of an outsized light bulb. This time the lamp is made of plastic and its appearance can be changed by the use of colored light bulbs – and it is deliberately kitschy. "Bulb Bulb is fun. Pop and kitsch," as Ingo Maurer puts it.

At the 1984 "Euroluce" trade fair in Milan, Ingo Maurer launched the technology he ad developed for a halogen lighting system, which immediately created a furore. Little low-voltage halogen lamps are strung in parallel rows in space. In 1992 Ingo Maurer came up with "Lucellino", a light bulb sporting little goose-feather wings. The Ingo Maurer pendent lamp "Porca Miseria", made of smashed crockery suspended around the source of light on wires, dates from 1994. "Zettel'z" (1998) was a smash hit, a lamp with scraps of Japanese paper fastened on wires, bearing poems or drawings.

In 1999 Ingo Maurer used several large aluminium lampshades with a diameter of four meters in designing the Munich Westfriedhof underground station. A smaller version of the Ingo Maurer "XXL Dome" has been mass produced. By 1973 Design M had become Ingo Maurer Lighting GmbH.

At age 87, Maurer passed away in his Munich home on 21 October 2019.