Gustavo Pulitzer Finali was born in Trieste in 1887 into a wealthy merchant family of Jewish origin; after his studies in Trieste in 1908, he joined the engineering faculty of the Polytechnic technical university of Munich.
In his birthplace Trieste, through the German speaking community there, he came in touch with the ideas of Bauhaus (an academy founded in 1919 which existed for only fourteen years, it has left a major mark on the interior design and architecture and is recognizable by its sleek designs with geometric shapes) and the Werkbund (a German union of artists, architects, designers and industrialists, founded in 1907). The ideas of both became an important part of his later modernist approach.
After his studies he decided to travel to Italy: Emilia, Umbria and Tuscany, where he documented the Roman and Renaissance architecture. Later, between 1914 and 1918 Pulitzer traveled to Greece, England and the Americas to further deepen his knowledge of interior design and architecture.
Although in the beginning of his career he mainly worked on villas and apartments, he also participated in (inter-)national exhibitions where furniture was shown he designed and produced himself.
In 1920, together with the architect Ceas, he founded the Stuard studio in Trieste, specializing in decorative upholstery for furnishings. Soon, they were joined by his wife Ducia KitterIt and it does not take long for Stuard to become the leading firm regarding modern naval fittings.
In 1925 Pulitzer received his first important commissions from the Cosulich shipowners for the design of several public spaces on their ships Saturnia (1927) and Vulcania (1928), marking the start of an impressive career of decorating ocean liners. Starting with the Saturnia-class in the late ‘20s, exterior profiles became more streamlined, although their interiors would still mainly be old school.
1930 is an important year for Pulitzer when he wins the competition organized by owners Lloyd Triestino and the yard Cantiere San Marco and he gets the assignment of the entire design and fitting out of the motor ship Victoria which is intended for the Alexandria route. Until then this was the Coppedé-dominated period where inspiration came from an array of historical styles including Louis XIV,XV, XVI , Tuscan Renaissance, Baroque, Spanish Moresque, etc. Pulitzer delivers a masterpiece with the interiors of the Victoria which is launched in 1931 in Trieste. Her streamlined profile was soon compared by many to that of the famous Bremen (Norddeutscher Lloyd) of 1929. Pulitzer had been deeply impressed by Bremen when he travelled with her, he commented later: “in the beauty of the hull and of the external structure lies the constant presence of a new aestethic awareness”. This meant that he was of the opinion that interior design needed to be integrated with the external structure of the ships hull and bulkheads, a design approach he would follow for many ships after Victoria. Working together with naval architect Costanzi, onboard Victoria he designed the 1st class restaurant as an amazing double-height space with large neoclassical-styled windows. In her functional and sober interiors, the ship’s frame often remained in plain sight. Refined materials were used: part of the metal roof-trusses were covered by polished macassar ebony, the side walls were faced with gold leaf, while the cross walls were clad in polished Indian walnut and featured Egyptian style bas-reliefs by Cernigoi (1898-1985), a Slovene painter. Carpets and upholstery were blue. Gio Ponti-designed Richard Ginori china graced the buffet recess. The ceilings had indirect lighting and were partly backlit. Luxury and innovative materials like brass, exotic woods, leather, onyx and travertine coverings combined with linoleum flooring as well, complemented with copper and chrome metal details were used all over the ship. Several other famous names were involved in her interiors: examples hereof where ceramics by Gio Ponti and stained glass by Libero Andreotti.
During the 1930’s (and until the 1960’s), the Stuard studio remained the industry leader in naval interiors and fittings, resulting in an order for the fitting out of the transatlantic liner Conte di Savoia of the Lloyd Sabaudo in 1932. The Conte di Savoia‘s interiors were designed by Pulitzer in the Novecento-style, the Italian version of Art Deco. The entire March 1933 edition of Ponti’s magazine Domus was completely dedicated to this new spectacular liner. His interior design resulting in calm modernist subdued public spaces with frequent use of indirect light was in sharp contrast with that of Adolfo Coppede, (see my article on the Coppede brothers) who was responsable for the grand salon which he did in his well-known over the top exuberant historical style.
After the war, Italy’s passenger fleet needed to be rebuilt and most of this was financed by the Marshall Plan, an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe.
At a rapid pace, new liners were delivered for service all over the globe. This time, the competition for the interior designs contracts of these ships was were won by a group of architects, among them Ponti, Pulitzer and Zoncada (1898-1988). Soon, Australia (1950), Oceania (1950), Neptunia (1951), Giulio Cesare, (1951), Augustus (1952), Africa, (1952), Europa (1952), Victoria (1953), Asia (1953), Andrea Doria (1953) and Cristoforo Colombo (1954), were delivered.
Gustavo Pulitzer Finali worked on the majority of these vessels:
He was responsable for the dining rooms on Giulio Cesare (1950) and Augustus (1950).
He also designed the Neptunia and Oceania (both 1951) for owners Lloyd Triestino where he provided even the lower classes with an acceptable level of comfort, by some seen as pioneering today’s cruise concept.
The Andrea Doria (1953) designs were done by other interior designers, compared to ther sister ship Cristoforo Colombo (1954) she was the more glamorous ship. But Pulitzer was responsible for almost the entire vessel and Cristoforo Columbus’ interiors turned out to be more demure, with the use of soft, gentle colours and indirect lighting.
For the Leonardo da Vinci (1958) interior designs, Pulitzer worked together with Longoni, Zoncada, Gottardi, Monaco and Luccichenti on this assignment. Although their designs have a the usual modernist touch, the ship itself was unfortunately still based on a (vertically arrannged) three class configuration and the strict separation of classes which led to many dead ends in corridors. This would make her far less suitable for cruising than for example the Dutch Rotterdam (1959, see article ).
The same group worked on the Michelangelo (1965) which still had this same problem of rigid class division. In this case, Pulitzer was responsable fort he first class dining room and the hallways.
Apart from Italian ships Gustavo Pulitzer-Finale was responsible for other vessels like Victoria’s conversion in 1958 from the 1936-built Dunnotar Castle (Union Castle Line) chic interior stylings, which were full of fine wood paneling and gorgeous midcentury Italian furniture. Victoria had a dining room with a barrel shaped domed ceiling and musician’s balcony as well as a two deck high auditorium.
As Gustavo Pulitzer Finali would put it himself, “the interiors must not be architectures that overlap with those of the ship, not fake palaces, not fake structures. Architecture must seek harmony in the genius of the cladding, without altering the spaces offered to him by the structures of the ship itself. Countless exquisite effects can be obtained in every detail, by studying the most appropriate, and sometimes most intimate and secret, resources that each material offers to decorative expression”.
In many cases, Pulitzer projected elements of life on board an ocean liner to land-based architecture. Starting from the 1930s, he also acquired commissions for the interior design of offices, commercial spaces and high-class hotels, examples hereof are the Trieste Stock Exchange (1930), the Albergo Duchi d’Aosta in Sestrieres (1932), the Grosvenor Hotel in London (1934), the offices for Italian shipping companies in London (1934), the Palace of the League of Nations in Geneva (1936), four hotels in Chicago, Boston, New Orleans and Palm Beach (1944-47), the Ideal Standard offices and showroom in Milan (1953-58).
Gustavo Pulitzer-Finali (1887 – 1967), who apart from being a liner interior designer, also worked as an architect, urban planner (e.g. with Ignazio Guidi and Cesare Valle he developed the idea and evolution of the city of Carbonia, Sardinia, desired by the fascist regime in the second half of the 1930s) and furniture designer. He was without any doubt one of the most important figures in naval interior architecture of the 20th century and one of the Big Three, together with Gio Ponti, Zoncada. Pulitzer, was a leading exponent of the Trieste school, which was known for following a contemporary style, in contrast to the more classically oriented Genoese school.
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