Designer at odds with Armani

US designer and architect Peter Marino relishes the visual stimulation of art all around him — and admits he is at odds with fashion guru Giorgio Armani on when enough is enough.

Statues at the preview of the international exhibition, 'Beauty and Power: Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Peter Marino Collection', at the Huntington Museum in San Marino, California.

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US designer and architect Peter Marino relishes the visual stimulation of art all around him — and admits he is at odds with fashion guru Giorgio Armani on when enough is enough.

The 61-year-old, who has a collection of bronzes currently on show in California, has for the last four decades been designing hotels, homes and luxury stores around the world.

Over the years he has worked with some of the biggest names in the art and designer world — including Armani, whose home he was working on in 1988 when the pair realised they had a fundamental difference.

“When the home was finished — I understood because he is a minimalist — he put no art in it. It’s the only house I’ve ever worked on in my entire career with not a single painting, nor a single sculpture,” he said.

“And he said to me ‘Peter, my eyes are so tired at the end of the day that I want to go home and just want to be in a cell and I don’t want to see nothing.’”

“If you were in my office, you would see that every room is full of paintings, sculptures, ceramics, glasswork, everything. But it doesn’t make me exhausted, it stimulates me, it gives me life.” Marino’s collection of bronze statues are on currently on display at the Huntington Museum in San Marino.