Architect, designer, photographer, writer, sportsman, skier, aerobatic pilot; Carlo Mollino escapes easy definitions. “A dry and petite stature, a hollowed-out face and above all a snappy style, taken from the world of the circus, à la Cocteau, a bit like Charlot” is how Mollino’s assistant at the Politecnico di Torino during the 1960s described him.

Best known as the visionary architect of Turin’s Teatro Regio, whose curved auditorium was famously inspired by the shape of an egg, Mollino is often mythologized as an eccentric dandy and womanizer.