In a 1991 interview for Italian public broadcaster RAI, Enzo Mari discussed how he sought to distance himself from the “ludic” trends in contemporary design. Speaking in his typically stern tones, he insisted that design bears more resemblance to war than it does to playing games.

After his scenography studies and a few exhibits as a kinetic-programmatic artist, Mari’s first steps had in fact been in the world of games and children’s publishing. Yet, as we shall see, his participation in the Italian kinetic art movement, which art critic Lea Vergine defined as “the last vanguard,” would decisively mark the way he thought about design.

This experience would also forge his critical vision of the applied arts: too politically committed to obey the market, but too little so to change the shape of the world. But his dismay at this fact wasn’t enough to make him reverse course and find a space in the less “alienated” world of art.