Gastone Rinaldi

Gastone Rinaldi was born in Padua, Italy in 1920. In 1916 his father Mario had estab­lished RIMA, a company for the produc­tion of metal furni­ture. Gastone enrolled in the Faculty of Econom­ics, but he was passion­ate about design and sport. In 1948, with his brother Giorgio, they took over from his father in manag­ing his busi­ness. He met Gio Ponti and in 1950 he designed the chairs for the Hospi­tal Section of the IX Milan Trien­nial. In 1952, he attended the XXX Milano Fair in the section curated by Alberto Rosselli, Ettore Sottsass and Marco Zanuso. The armchairs for the Piccolo theatre of Milan followed, with Zanuso. In 1954, he won the Compasso d’Oro for the chair DU30. He partic­i­pated with Ponti, Parisi, De Carli and Gardella in the Amer­i­can adven­ture of Altamira, one of the first compa­nies across the ocean to call Italian design­ers. However the inter­nal rela­tions within RIMA became complex and in 1974 Rinaldi estab­lished Thema. Thema closed in 1989, Gastone Rinaldi died in Padua in 2006.