LO STUDIO BOGGERI 1933 – 1981
Carlo Pirovano [Editor], Bruno Monguzzi [Curator/Designer]
Carlo Pirovano [Editor], Bruno Monguzzi [Curator/Designer]: LO STUDIO BOGGERI 1933 - 1981. Milan: Electa, 1981. First edition [Pagina series]. Text in Italian. Square quarto. Photo illustrated printed French-folded wrappers. Printed slipcase. 120 pp. 368 color and black and white reproductions. Book spine faintly age-toned. Uncoated wrappers lightly smudged. A very good or better copy housed in a very good Publishers slipcase: orange slipcase lightly faded, rubbed and worn along top edge with a bit of separation and a snag to the rear panel. Rare.
9.5 x 8.75 softcover book with 120 pages and 368 color and black and white reproductions from the 48-year history of Milan's Studio Boggeri. The most extensive collection to date on the output of this legendary Studio -- my highest recommendation.
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, Irme 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.
Includes work by Walter Ballmer, Kathe Bernhardt, Antonio Boggeri, Ezio Bonnie, Ado Calabresi, Erberto Carboni, Deberny & Peignot, Fortunato Depero, Roby D'Silva, Franco Grignani, Honegger-Lavater, Max Huber, Enzo Mari, Rene Martinelli, Armando Milani, Bruno Monguzzi, Remo Muratore, Marcello Nizzoli, Bob Noorda, Hazy Osterwalder, Irme Reiner, Ricas-Munari, Roberto Sambonet, Leone Sbrana, Xanti Schawinsky, Max Schneider, Albe Steiner, and Carlo Vivarelli.
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.
Bruno Monguzzi (Swiss, b. 1941) studied Graphic Design in Geneva, then Typography, Photography and Gestalt Psychology in London.
“I left for London where I selected a few courses: Romek Marber’s at St Martin’s, Dennis Bailey’s at Central, photography at the London School of Printing. Thanks to Ken Briggs, whom I had also met at St Martin’s and who tried to answer my many questions, I discovered Gestalt psychology and became very involved in the study of visual perception. It is at that point, in 1961, that I started to believe in graphic design as a problem-solving profession rather than a problem-making one and that I slowly began to push away my hidden dream to became another Werner Bischof. It was also at the time that I began to understand and to love the American school: Gene Federico, Herb Lubalin, Lou Dorfsman, Lou Danziger, Charles and Ray Eames.”
“In the second issue of Neue Grafik I discovered the Milanese pioneers – Studio Boggeri, Max Huber, Franco Grignani – and I decided to fly to Milan to meet Antonio Boggeri. I still remember the tiny elevator of 3 Piazza Duse. On the slow, shaky journey up to the sixth floor I felt uneasy. And I felt uneasy for the following two years, having fallen in love with the man, his ideas, the designs of Aldo Calabresi and the office with the balcony overlooking the Giardini. After a few weeks of desperate struggle to be good enough to stay there, I was called for. Lifting his lean, long hands – the most beautiful hands I have ever seen – Boggeri shared with me his theory about the spider’s web. Like the spider’s web, he said, Swiss graphic design was perfect, but often of a useless perfection. The web, he stated, was only useful when harmed by the entangled fly. It was then that my vocabulary began to increase. And it was then that my use of type and pictures began to grow towards more expressive solutions.”
Monguzzi started as an assistant at Studio Boggeri in 1961, became Antonio Boggeri’s son-law in 1974, and curated and designed the Studio Boggeri retrospective at the Milan Triennale in 1981.
In 1971, Monguzzi received the Bodoni prize for his contribution to Italian graphic design and he became a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale in 1979. In 1983, in association with Visuel Design Jean Widmer, he won the competition for the signage system and identity for the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Monguzzi was Art Consultant for Abitare magazine from 1986 to 1991. He was the sole designer for Museo Cantonale d’Arte, Lugano from 1987 to 2004. He lives and works in Meride, Switzerland.<p>
All Monguzzi quotes first published in Eye no. 1 vol. 1, 1990.