L’UOVO DI COLOMBO
Studio Boggeri 1933-1937
Antonio Boggeri
[Studio Boggeri] Antonio Boggeri: L’UOVO DI COLOMBO [Studio Boggeri 1933-1937]. Milan: Studio Boggeri, 1937. Original edition. Slim quarto. Thick photo illustrated stapled wrappers. 22 pp. One fold out. Illustrated with 47 black and white work examples. Wrappers lightly edgeworn, but a nearly fine example.
The Egg of Columbus is the simple and universal expression of advertising.
6 3/8” x 8 1/8” stapled booklet with a gorgeous TypoFoto cover and 22 pages of work created by Milan’s Studio Boggeri between 1933 and 1937. A superb—and rare—promotional booklet finely produced by Pizzi & Pizio, Milano. Includes work examples by Antonio Boggeri, Deberney & Peignot, Imre Reiner, Kathe Bernhardt, Xanti Schawinsky, Erberto Carboni, Riccardo Ricas, Bruno Munari, Remo Muratore and others.
Presenting the Egg of Columbus, about four years ago, we inaugurated our initiative with these words: the Studio Boggeri strives for he ultimate expression of technology and art advertising. Our specialized artists, Italians and foreigners, and our technical organization, provide your advertising ideas with a guarantee of effective and ingenious construction. After four years years our program is now fully implemented. With more than words, we hope to persuade by presenting, in the following pages, some of our work from this period.
In 1933, a new direction in Italian Avant-Garde design were trumpeted by the opening of the Studio Boggeri in Milan in the heart of the industrial north. Former violinist Antonio Boggeri opened his self-named studio to spread the avant-garde stylings of The Ring of New Advertising Artists to the Italian peninsula. This being Italy, things quickly got complicated, with strict Bauhaus dogma yielding to Milan's playful karma. Boggeri's all-star roster started with Bauhaus-trained Xanti Schawinsky and quickly grew to include Marcello Nizzoli, Erberto Carboni, Imre Reiner and Kathe Bernhardt.
Boggeri and his colleagues paid tribute to the homegrown aesthetic of Marinetti’s Futurism, but were firmly forward-looking with their embrace of contemporary trends such as PhotoMontage, Collage and the ideology of the New Typography, while -- in the spirit of inclusiveness -- mixing in every other “Ism” of the 1930s Avant-Garde. The exuberance of early Boggeri output got Mussolini's attention, and Il Duce followed the aesthetic leads of Hitler and Stalin by clamping down on the artistic diversity radiating out of Milan.
Studio Boggeri survived the was and quickly came to the the forefront of the postwar Italian design Renaissance, trading the Avant-Garde stylings of the prewar years for the cool calculations of the Swiss through the fifties al the way into the eighties, all the while maintaining their essential spirit of levity.
Antonio Boggeri’s (Italian, 1900– 1989) first love was the violin. The musical prodigy enrolled at the Technical Institute of Pavia at age 16 where he added a Kodak 4x4 camera to his creative toolbox. Within two years he relocated to Milan and met Antonio Crespi. In 1924, Crespi bought the leading printing company in Milan, Alfieri & Lacroix and Boggeri was offered a job at Alferi & Lacroix.
After Boggeri gained printing experience at Alferi & Lacroix, he opened Studio Boggeri in Milan in 1933. Boggeri was heavily influenced by Russian photomontage techniques, the typographic modernity of Jan Tschichold and the work emanating from the Dessau Bauhaus. Before Fascism calcified European culture Milan was one of the Continental creative crossroads, attracting talent from neighboring Switzerland, Austria, and all the southern regions of Italy.
Studio Boggeri quickly grew into one of the best and most important design studios in the world. The Studio connected the dots between Italian and Swiss graphic design like no one before, solidifying Modernism as the dominant principle of graphic design. No other firm could match the an outstanding Boggeri roster : Albe Steiner, Aldo Calabresi, Antonio Boggeri himself, Armando Milani, Bob Noorda, Bruno Monguzzi, Bruno Munari, Carlo Vivarelli, Enzo Mari, Ezio Bonini, Fortunato Depero, Franco Grignani, Imre Reiner, Marcello Nizzoli, Max Huber, Remo Muratore, René Martinelli, Roberto Sambonet, Walter Ballmer, Xanti Schawinsky, and many others.
Antonio Boggeri was invited by Alliance Graphique Internationale for exhibition in Paris (1951), London (1956), Lausanne (1957) and Milan (1961). He received the Triennale gold medal and was awarded the Life of Adverstising Award in 1967. He appointed an honorary member of Art Director Club of Milan. Studio Boggeri closed in 1981. Antonio Boggeri passed away in Santa Margherita Ligure on November 10th, 1989.