Ai Weiwei - illy Art Collection

The Designer

This illy Art Collection designed by Ai Weiwei is inspired by his famous Coloured Vases (2006), ancient Neolithic vases that the artist dipped into cans of industrial paint, radically changing their appearance and function. With these desecrating ready-mades Ai Weiwei renews and transforms an artefact from the past into a work of contemporary art, through a process of appropriation and destruction.



Illy Art Collection

A passion for beauty and well-made objects, a deep admiration for contemporary art , and our blend’s exceptional quality all led us to combine coffee’s sensory pleasure with the aesthetic pleasure of art by rethinking an everyday object: the coffee cup.

This is how the illy Art Collections are born: small works of art in the form of a cup, numbered and signed, transforming the act of drinking an espresso into an experience that involves the senses and mind.