"BATTISTA ‘PININ’ FARINA founded his company in May 1930. It was launched as a specialist coachbuilder for private customers and small production runs. Right from the start the company undertook commissions from major Italian manufacturers, and at the Paris motor show "
Cisitalia Berlinetta
In 1951, New York’s Museum of Modern Art selected a Cisitalia Berlinetta for display. The superbly weighted, aesthetically integrated Cisitalia was an artifact of evidence that the sculptural form of steel, aluminium and other materials really could aspire to the heights of the sublime.
Not only was the car itself a miracle of simple form – its emergence from the smouldering industrial complex of post-war Italy was not exactly a minor miracle. Thus the MOMA exhibit also nodded to the genius of post war reconstruction too.
For the Cisitalia’s design, a young Battista ‘Pinin’ Farina reached out from the roots of his thirties upbringing but fused them with a distinctly sweeping, fluid post-war vision. It was a form that influenced so many cars that arose from Italian Carrozzeria in subsequent decades that it could quite easily be named as one of the most influential cars of the post war era.
Yet another garland for Snr Farina.
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