He began his career in the 40's working on stage sets, a great passion of his. He was convinced that design needed to be both modern and richly poetic, and soon began to gain support from many of the country's leading designers and architects: "fathers of the country", as he jokingly refers to them, including Carlo Scarpa, Enzo Mari, Marcel Breuer, to name but a few. His work in those years was an important starting point for what then came to be known as Italian Style, and has since come to stand for top quality, giving Italian design the prestigious reputation that it still enjoys today throughout the whole world.

Dino Gavina is best known for founding Gavina SpA, an Italian furniture production company established to manufacture the work of designers from the burgeoning Italian design scene of the 1950s and 60s. Gavina was an early producer of work by many influential Italian modernists, including the Castiglioni brothers, Carlo and Tobia Scarpa, Cini Boeri, Roberto Sebastian Matta, Vico Magistretti and Mario Bellini. Despite being a dedicated supporter of modern design, ultimately Gavina lacked the bookkeeping and business skills to prevent his company’s bankruptcy.

Interested in Gavina’s portfolio of designs and manufacturing facilities, Knoll bought the bankrupt company in 1968. Perhaps the most attractive aspect of the acquisition was the rights to Marcel Breuer’s Cesca, Wassily, and Laccio chairs and tables, which Dino Gavina had secured from Breuer some years earlier. For the next decade the Knoll catalog featured many designs from members of the so-called Gavina Group.