Vito Nesta is a multi-disciplined designer-maker based in Milan with projects that span graphic and product design, interior decorating, photography, and painting.
Born in 1987 in Corato, Nesta is strongly influenced by the nature he was surrounded by growing up in rural Puglia along with a fascination with foreign culture, which is consistently fed by his travels across the world. After graduating in 2011 from the University of Florence with a degree in interior design, Nesta moved to Milan, where eventually founded his eponymous studio in 2013.
The designer has described the home of an Argentinian old lady he met when he was six years old as a major source of his inspiration. According to Nesta, her house harbored an eclectic mix of exotic treasures; 1950s Parisian wallpaper, an enormous embalmed crocodile from Guadeloupe which had been transformed into a table, Murano glass lighting, white peacocks in petroleum blue, and green forests and large polished copper plates from Portugal are just a few of the things he remembers. This creative sanctuary was overflowing with inspiration and made him curious to explore more. Nesta’s designs make the journey a natural condition of his existence while instilling a youthful search for colors, distant smells, and visions, discovered elsewhere as well as in everyday life. The result of this incessant wandering research is the emergence of an imaginary world of symbols and stories that suggest distant lands—sometimes hybrids between different cultures—with nature always a strong presence in his motifs.
Since the establishment of his studio, Nesta has collaborated with an impressive list of companies including Cadriano, Devon & Devon, Effetto Vetro, Fratelli Majello, Imarika, Karpeta, Les-Ottomans, Riva 1920, Roche Bobois, Sanbonet, Texturae, and Secondome Gallery. One of his latest projects, which was presented at Maison & Object in Paris in January 2018, is Grand Tour. This collection of ceramic and textile pieces tells the story of a long journey, at times real and at times imagined, inspired by the itineraries that the young Renaissance men, who had just come of age, undertook. Through this series, the designer envisions what they saw with their own eyes as the beauty and culture that the world had to offer unfolded. While Vito Nesta is a man of the millennial generation, and not of Renaissance times, there is a sense that he will always have the wonder and passion of a young man on the Grand Tour. There is still so much for him to see and we can’t wait to see how he interprets his next adventure through real or imagined spheres.
