A Ride
On the Art
HELIO ASCARI
Looking back to move forward. This motto sums up the philosophy behind the talent and passion in the works by the artist Helio Ascari. He took up the challenge to apply manual skills learned in his youth to the creation of bespoke bicycles and design and fashion accessories. The result has been a resounding success. Helio has opened the doors of Ascari Bicycles, a world of craftsmanship where vintage and modern styles fuse with personality.
Marc Augé, a renowned philosopher and anthropologist, says that the bicycle evokes memories of our corporeality and adolescence. But the bike is not only memory, it is still relevant today, a two-wheel vehicle that makes us think about changes in the urban spaces we live in and in the environment surrounding us. For so long, the bicycle was part of our mythology, representing the daily experience of many people. Today, as Augè says, we do not realize that we are part of a new humanism of cycling.
A Ride
On the Art
Ascari Bicycles, a modern business that combines tradition and innovation, can be seen as a good example of the French anthropologist’s theory. It is not just a brand, but a lifestyle for lovers of craftsmanship and design. Helio, together with his wife, Maria Thereza, founded the brand in 2011, with the intention to craft unique objects and accessories that were both beautiful and practical. “I was looking for the key to combine and apply my personal skills and my passion for the world of bicycle”. The solution was found in a bicycle repair tool – the wrench.
We enter the creative workshop of Helio, The Space NYC, a vast industrial space in the heart of Brooklyn, where art and industry meet. A workshop, showroom and storefront, The Space NYC is a dream come true, an aesthetic platform conceived by Helio together with the artist Max Poglia and the fashion businessman Alessandro Squarzi, whom he met in Florence.
Brazil, Italy, America and Japan are all influences for the melting pot that is Ascari Bicycles. Brazil is where everything started, Italy is the home of beauty and culture, America provided the vibe and the work opportunity, while Japan added style and the inventiveness of a distant culture. Once art travels on wheels, it is logical to see an Ascari Bicycle as a design object.
Helio defines himself as a dreamer and a lover of the 1930s vintage style. His mind runs free like a man on his bike, full of adrenaline and energy.
“If you think about the history of cars, airplanes and motorcycles, you will see that they all sprang from the bicycle. Being able to apply everything I learned into such a humble and simple ‘machine’ is really wonderful,” Helio says. “There is a mix of personal experience and passion behind this brand.”
It is so captivating to watch him work as we talk to him: the details are small gems, and his Ascari signature on the crossbar is elegant and discrete, with a font that calls to mind the typography of the 30s. On the front side of the handlebars we find the logo of a man in a hat riding a bicycle. Helio’s creations are works of art, where every detail is important. Surrounded by tools, paint and machines, Helio is like a craftsman in his workshop. He smooths surfaces, welds handlebars, fixes the spokes of kaleidoscopic shaped bicycles, covers a seat with leather.
One of the bikes is displayed on a long wooden table, too delicate and precious to be touched. Inside the space, all the different models can be seen, each of them emblematic and of a vibrant lightness. The King Series, with frames wrapped in leather and encrusted with precious stones; the City Collection, designed for urban spaces and with a classical style; and the Track Series, designed for speed, lightweight and minimal.
Helio’s eyes shine as he takes us back in time to his childhood in southern Brazil. We can almost see him as a kid when he tells us: “I was eight when I found an abandoned bicycle in the basement. It was not exactly how I wanted it to be, but I found a repair shop and transformed it”.
“When I was ten, I discovered the world of factory work and began to learn
the secrets and techniques of the leather processing, furniture building and shoe manufacturing. After some time I acquired those skills. I was fascinated
by furniture building and wood processing, but my true love has always been the bicycle, because of its shape and the sense of freedom it gave me”. Yet, art and Italy flow fast in his veins, as fast as these “humble machines” changed Helio’s life. In the artist’s family, the name Ascari rhymes with Formula One and racing cars: “Alberto Ascari, my uncle’s father, was twice Formula One World Champion. Antonio Ascari, the cousin of my great-grandfather, won the Italian Grand Prix in 1924”, says Helio about his Italian roots.
“When I was living in Milan, in 1999, I was pleasantly surprised by the style of people riding bicycles: they looked like they just came out of a movie set. I told myself that one day I would recreate that beauty”.
“At 21 I started modelling and traveled the world. I was often in Italy, where I had the wonderful chance to visit the maisons of Ferragamo, Gianfranco Ferré, Armani and Ermenegildo Zegna. Here, I discovered the extraordinary techniques of dressmaking, as well as the premium quality of the manufacturing industry. I was more interested in the fashion house than in the catwalk. My interest in fashion comes from my mother, who was a dressmaker herself. When I was a child, I was surrounded by cloth, wool and cutting and stitching activities. On the other hand, in terms of taste, I owe it all to my father, a very refined and incredibly sensitive man”.
As the years passed, Helio discovered and admired the great masters of the past, from the great men of the Renaissance, like Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci, to the legendary jewelers like Cartier, Fabergé, and Tiffany&Co. “This world was beautiful, complex and detailed, and I decided that this would be the foundation for the design of Ascari Bicycles”.
“The manufacture process is a constant revolution for me, because it starts as a simple sketch drawn in my own mind” Helio says. “Then I have to understand the process of assembling the materials, and decide how to transform them uniformly. I make it and I look at it… but this can be a constant transformation, a continuous process of adding and removing…. However, there comes a time when you have to get on the bike and go, in order to mark the end of the whole process and start a new personal project.”
However, Helio not only produces accessories and bicycles for a luxury brand, he has also collaborated with other fashion labels, like the Japanese Old Joe, creating Ascari Bicycles t-shirts with vintage looks and fonts, as well as caps and fabric bags. “I also collaborated with Ralph Lauren, and they have one of my bicycles in their offices”.
“Of course,” he smiles, “it’s on display like a work of art in a museum”.
Looking around the shop windows of his space, we are drawn by the Ascari Vintage Sunglasses, a special edition created together with Dom Vetro, a company based in the Italian Alps. These sunglasses are as sophisticated as all the other models in 1930s style, with special leather wrap that recalls bamboo weaving.
Helio’s stories took us on a trip around the world, with music always in the background. A turntable is playing Milano Sessions, the 1959 record by Chet Baker, an American jazz trumpeter and vocalist. “Chet Baker recorded this LP in Milan. Just as he was reaching the city, however, he was arrested for drug possession and taken directly to jail.
A big production was ready, and the Milan symphonic orchestra was waiting for him, so it was impossible to call everything off. He was allowed out of prison during the day to record, but had to get back and sleep behind the bars. Despite these circumstances, the album is wonderful.
He loved Italy, just like I do”.
