RASSEGNA 6
IL CAMPO DELLA GRAFICA ITALIANA
Vittorio Gregotti [Direttore responsabile]
Vittorio Gregotti [Direttore responsabile]: 6 RASSEGNA: IL CAMPO DELLA GRAFICA ITALIANA [The Field of Italian Graphics]. Milan: Editrice CIPIA, 1981. Original edition [anno III, n. 6 – aprile 1981]. Text in Italian with parallel English cutlines. Quarto. Plain white paper wrappers. Printed dust jacket. 164 pp. 554 color and black and white illustrations. Multiple fold-outs. Interior unmarked and very clean. Out-of-print. Wrappers lightly worn and soiled. A very good copy.
9 x 12 soft cover book with 164 pages and 554 color and black and white illustrations. The bulk of the journal [104 pages] is devoted to IL CAMPO DELLA GRAFICA ITALIANA. Features hundreds of Posters, Advertisements, Catalogues, Packaging and Corporate Identity Packages from the Golden Age of Italian Graphic Design. Rassegna 6 is one of the finest single collections of Italian Graphic Design yet published. Highly recommended.
Under the loose directorship of Vittorio Gregotti, RASSEGNA was an Italian Design magazine underwritten by six Italian firms: Ariston, B&B Italia, Castelli, iGuzzini illuminazione, Molteni and co., and Sabiem. Each issue was devoted to a single designer or theme and lavishly produced, with high-quality reproduction and carefully selected and presented illustrations.
- Il campo della grafica italiana: storia e problemi by Giovanni Anceschi
- Una B rossa fra due punti: Colloquio con Antonio Boggeri
- Una posologia progettuale by Omar Calabrese
- Il campo della grafica italiana: progetti [Testi di Renato Giovannoli, Bruno Monguzzi, Massimo Vignelli, Tomás Maldonado, Franco Fortini, Maurizio Ferraris, Isabella Pezzini, Enzo Mari, Tomás Maldonado & Gui Bonsiepe, etc. ]
- La forma delle piastrelle by Ceramiche Ragno
- Sistema per illuminazione esterna: Un progetto di Bruno Gecchelin [iGuzzini]
- Mou e Monk, Tavoli e sedie: Un progetto di Afra e Tobia Scarpa [Molteni & C.]
- Design Dl, Spazi per cucina: Un progetto di Makio Hasuike [Ariston]
- Alanda, Forma, equilibrio, uso: Un progetto di Paolo Piva [B&B Italia]
- Strutture-arredo: Un'applicazione del Pert integrata a un'archittetura [Castelli]
Designers include Antonio Boggeri, Bruno Munari, George Grosz and John Heartfield, Kurt Schwitters, László Moholy-Nagy, Piet Zwart, Herbert Bayer, Max Huber, Ezio Bonini, Albe Steiner, Aldo Calabresi, Remo Muratore, Giovanni Pintori, Franco Grignani, Pino Tovaglia, Giuseppe Trivisani, Xanti Schawinsky, Bruno Monguzzi, Massimo Vignelli, Walter Ballmer, Enzo Mari, Tomas Maldonando, Italo Lupi, A. G. Fronzoni, Saul Steinberg, Michele Spera, Bob Noorda, Giulio Cittato and Mimmo Castellano among others.
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. [rassegna 7418]