Flaminio Bertoni
car designer (1903 - 1964)
Flaminio Bertoni, born in Masnago (Varese) on January 10, 1903, was an Italian designer and sculptor. One of the greatest automobile designers of all time, he is little known in Italy, having worked primarily abroad, in France, where he is considered one of the great masters of 20th-century automotive design.
An artistic soul, he had a great passion for painting and sculpture, particularly admiring the work of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, from whom he inherited a vision of design as a total art form.
In 1918, at the tender age of fifteen, he began an apprenticeship at Carrozzeria Macchi, one of Varese's most important industrial firms. It was there that, thanks to his talent for drawing, he attracted the attention of several visiting French technicians. The meeting marked a turning point: five years later, Flaminio crossed the Alps to begin a new professional adventure in France, the cradle of automotive innovation at the time.
France in those years was the center of automotive research, where new ideas that would lead to the creation of the modern automobile were born.
Bertoni approached André Citroën with his patent for pneumatic window lifts and was immediately hired.
He returned to Varese where he opened a design studio. Far ahead of the times for Italian entrepreneurs, he clashed with the still conservative mentality of Italian industry and decided to return to Paris in 1931, never to return to Italy.
After a brief stint at the Société Industrielle de Carrosserie, he returned to Citroën, finding himself the right man, in the right place, at the right time.
He was commissioned to study the form of the "Citroën Traction Avant" for which he created, for the first time in automotive history, a three-dimensional scale model, drawing on his background as a sculptor.
In the following years, he designed some of Citroën's most important models until 1964, including the "2CV" and the futuristic "DS."
The events and consequences of World War II often clashed with Bertoni's unpredictable and unyielding character.
In 1940, he was arrested for refusing to sign a declaration of allegiance to France, abjuring his native country. In 1944, he was arrested again on charges of having contributed to the operation of Citroën during the war.
In 1961, he was appointed Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the writer André Malraux, then Minister of Culture in the de Gaulle government.
