Alberto Pinto, founder of the interior-design firm that bears his name, and the designer of a number of famed megayachts, died on Sunday. He was 67 years old.
Born in Casablanca, Pinto studied at the famed Ecole de Louvre in Paris, known for its courses in art history, epigraphy (the study of inscriptions, particularly ancient ones), and more. Upon graduation he moved to the United States and established a photo agency, dedicated to interior design and decor. This afforded him a variety of experiences from Mexico to India, all of which influenced his love of design and certainly of color.
Indeed, color played a key role in all of Pinto’s work. Whether it was a megayacht like Alfa Nero or Madsummer (now TV), a private castle in England, or a hotel like The Palm Beach in the Canary Islands, Pinto injected bright, brilliant tones. He also deftly moved from one style to another, bringing baroque to life in one client’s home one day and studies in black and white to vivid reality elsewhere the next. Even Pinto’s own studio, which today is a 60-person-strong design and decoration company, is a wonder. It occupies five floors of a 17th-century home in Paris.
The fact that the company occupies five entire floors also speaks to something about Pinto. To quote his website, “he particularly appreciated being given gigantic spaces in which he put together styles and very different periods in an always perfect harmony.”
One of the last projects Pinto was working on was Oceanco’s Y708, a 281-footer (85.6-meter) that is being delivered soon.
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