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Event Details

Tue, September 19, 2017

18:00 – 19:00

VILLA LA PIETRA
Villa La Pietra
Via Bolognese, 120
50139 Firenze, Italia

A lecture by Prof. Giorgio Bacci, Scuola Nomale di Pisa.

In an age in which internet and television didn’t exist, or were taking their first steps, the cinema poster and playbill were “media go-betweens” that filtered, selected and offered spectators goods, namely the actors that were systematically produced by the efficient conveyor belt of the American star system. Silvano Campeggi had a leading role within this complex advertising and marketing machine that had to deal with cultural variations depending on the target market. We find his signature, Nano, on his works for the Italian market made for Metro Goldwyn Mayer and other big studios, between 1946 and 19694. Ben Hur and Gone with the Wind, Roman Holiday and Singin’ in the rain, Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn, Clarke Gable and James Dean: these are just some of the films and screen idols that this “top ignitor of sentiments”, as he was described by Gian Piero Brunetta, immortalised in over 3,000 posters, changing how people saw the cinema and its advertising. This conference, starting from the interesting results of a rapidly growing bibliography (both on the art of posters in general and Campeggi’s own production) doesn’t aim to review Nano’s entire production, something impossible to do here, but via semiological-iconographic analysis of some posters show the development in their figurative and communicative efficacy.

Featured Biographies

Giorgio Bacci

RESEARCH FELLOW IN HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY ART

(Livorno, 1980). He is currently Research Fellow in History of Contemporary Art at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. He has been (2012-2017) the national leader of the FIRB project, financed by the Italian Ministry of University and Research, Spreading visual culture: contemporary art through periodicals, archives and illustrations (www.capti.it). He has published numerous essays and articles and he is the author of Le illustrazioni in Italia tra Otto e Novecento. Libri a figure, dinamiche culturali e visive (2009); The drawn word. Mimmo Paladino’s path between art and literature (Italian/English text, 2015); Roberto Innocenti. The art of inventing books (Italian/English text, 2016). He has recently curated the exhibitions dedicated to the artists and well-known illustrators Mimmo Paladino (Pisa 2015 and Milan 2016), Roberto Innocenti (Pisa 2016) and Silvano Campeggi (Pisa 2017, and edited the related catalogue: Drawing Dreams. The cinema of Silvano Campeggi, Italian/English text). He also curated the exhibition From Pinocchio to Harry Potter: 150 years of Italian Illustrations from Salani Archive 1862-2012 (Milano 2012, and edited the related catalogue). He is interested in contemporary art, visual arts and cultural studies, particularly in the relation between art and literature.