Interiors · Exhibition
Poltrona Frau In Motion at 40: Futurism, Armchairs and the Culture of Movement
The Poltrona Frau Museum in Tolentino marks forty years of interiors for cars, trains, boats and aircraft with a Futurist painter and a limited armchair of 40 pieces.
Most furniture houses are judged by what stands in a living room. Poltrona Frau has spent four decades on a less visible job as well: the seats, dashboards and cabins of things that move. To mark the 40th anniversary of its In Motion business unit, the Poltrona Frau Museum in Tolentino has opened an exhibition that looks at that work through the eyes of an artist rather than an engineer.
It is called Dinamismo come Visione. Poltrona Frau In Motion incontra Ivo Pannaggi, in English Dynamism as Vision: Poltrona Frau In Motion Meets Ivo Pannaggi. It runs from 14 October 2026 to 31 January 2027 and is open to the public during regular museum hours.
Why a Futurist
Ivo Pannaggi was born in Macerata and is counted among the key figures of the second wave of Italian Futurism. Poltrona Frau stresses that he was far more than a painter: architect, graphic designer, set designer and designer, someone who moved freely between disciplines. That restlessness is the point of the pairing. A movement that worshipped speed meets a business unit that has spent forty years making speed comfortable.
The project was developed with the Centro Studi Pannaggi. The opening on 13 October came with a talk on the artist, with Giovanni Maiolo, General Manager of Poltrona Frau In Motion, the art historian Paola Ballesi, Director of Poliarte in Ancona, Giuliana Pascucci of the Civic Museums of Palazzo Buonaccorsi in Macerata and Roberto Cresti, Artistic Director of Museo Palazzo Ricci.
What is on show
The rooms bring together seating models, graphic works, historical photographs, documents and artworks on Pannaggi, Futurism, design and the culture of movement. Two pieces stand out. Dinamismo assoluto della mano sinistra comes from the artist's heirs, and Vecchio Treno is on loan from the Civic Museums of Palazzo Buonaccorsi. Together, the house says, they show the cultural and manufacturing heritage of the Marche region as a source for thinking about the mobility of the future.
Next to the exhibition, the museum presents a new installation on the In Motion unit itself. It follows the unit through landmark projects, among them the seat of the Pagani Utopia Roadster, and a timeline that starts with its earliest work on the Lancia Thema 8.32 and runs to today. The sectors are automotive, aviation, marine and rail.
An armchair from 1930, printed with a painting
The object that ties the two halves together is the Vanity Fair XC In Motion Limited Edition, made in just 40 numbered pieces. The Vanity Fair XC is the contemporary evolution of the armchair Renzo Frau designed in 1930. For the anniversary it wears Pannaggi's Dinamismo assoluto della mano sinistra, Absolute Dynamism of the Left Hand, reproduced in high definition digital print on Pelle Frau ColorSphere Impact leather. Lines of force and warm colours run over the whole upholstery.
The choice of a hand is deliberate. It stands for creative energy and craft, and it echoes the house principle Intelligence in Our Hands. For anyone who lives with a Vanity Fair, the edition is a reminder of how much of that famous softness is engineering.
Worth the detour
The exhibition is open during regular museum hours until the end of January, and guided tours can be booked with the museum. For a reader of muroso the visit says something useful about interiors in general: a seat that has to work in a car, a train or a yacht is a seat that has been thought through, and that thinking travels back into the living room.
