The exhibition event is part of the "masters of the graphic design” and retraces the creative and professional path of Giovanni Pintori, through a sort of “graphic story” in which the modernity of his design and his innovative choices emerge. The exhibition at the max museum, in an integrated project with the MAN_Museo of Art Province of Nuoro, exhibits over three hundred pieces including sketches, drafts, watercolour drawings, posters, brochures, collages, stencils, photographs and paintings on canvas.
The archive of Giovanni Pintoni
Giovanni Pintori left us an archive and documentation, relating to five decades, of fundamental importance for the study of advertising graphics linked to industry: the periods between 1937 and 1967 are distinguished – the collaboration with Olivetti –, between 1967 and the 70s – with Merzario, Gabbianelli, Olivetti, Pirelli, Ambrosetti, Parchi Liguria –, the years starting from 1980 – with the abandonment of graphics for a total immersion in painting. Finally, the Pintori family donated part of the archive to the MAN_Museo d'Arte Provincia di Nuoro at the end of the 1990s, and with these materials organized two exhibitions, in the 2007s and in XNUMX. This connection inspired the exhibition at the max museo with an integrated project with the MAN, in which for the first time the private collection of the son Paolo Pintori is made visible to the public: the sketches, the graphic works, the vintage posters, the notebooks, the very personal study cards through which Giovanni Pintori wanted to collect his most significant production. The youthful works of the ISIA are added thanks to the loan of the Civic Museums of Monza, as well as the documents of the mature professional experience through the materials lent by the Association Olivetti Historical Archive and Adriano Olivetti Foundation of Ivrea. The materials convey Pintori's artistic passions and his sharing with artists and art lovers (such as fellow countrymen Salvatore Fancello, Costantino Nivola and Ugo Mulas), in an innovative critical reading.
Giovanni Pintoni and Olivetti
The meeting between Giovanni Pintori and Adriano Olivetti was of capital importance both for the development of Pintori's experience as a graphic designer and creative, and for the affirmation of the innovative communication style of Ing. C. Olivetti & C. in the world. In an article published in the prestigious American magazine Print in 1961, Giovanni Pintori wrote: “It was very important for me, at the beginning of my career, to meet a man like Adriano Olivetti. This remarkable industrialist was a man of modern thought and culture. He considered the development of human expression and communication as a fundamental factor in the creation of a new society”. It was after the Second World War that Giovanni Pintori began to create, for Olivetti typewriters and calculators, that series of advertising posters that will attract worldwide artistic and commercial attention, helping to generate a recognizable identity – the Olivetti style – in the company's advertising communications.
Giovanni Pintoni, biography
Giovanni Pintori was born in 1912 in Tresnuraghes (Oristano) to parents originally from Nuoro, a city where the economically not well-off family had resided since 1918. After attending the ISIA (Istituto Superiore Industrie Artistiche di Monza) together with fellow countrymen Salvatore Fancello and Costantino Nivola, in 1936 he began working with the Olivetti Technical Advertising Office, of which he became manager in 1940, linking his name to the image of the Ivrea company in a long and successful series of posters, advertising pages, external signs, stands. In 1950 he obtained the first of a long list of awards, the Palma d'Oro of the Italian Advertising Federation, and became Art Director of Olivetti, enjoying the esteem and direct relationship with Adriano Olivetti. In 1952 the MoMA in New York organized the exhibition Olivetti: Design in Industry where Pintori's graphic works are also exhibited. In 1953 he joined the AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale) of which he became president. In 1955, during the exhibition at the Louvre in Paris, an entire room of graphics for Olivetti was dedicated to him. Countless awards related to this brand followed; his design and communication went around the world. Significant was the friendship between Adriano Olivetti and Giovanni Pintori, as well as with Elio Vittorini, Giancarlo De Carlo, Vittorio Sereni, or the artistic bond with Giorgio Morandi, Georges Braque and Ugo Mulas. After 1967, he left Olivetti to devote himself to the freelance profession, collaborating, among others, on projects for Pirelli, Gabbianelli, Ambrosetti, Parchi Liguria. After his commitment to the transport company Merzario, he left the profession of graphic designer and devoted himself completely to painting. Giovanni Pintori died in Milan on November 15, 1999 at the age of 87; he left behind an archive and documentation of fundamental importance for the study of advertising graphics related to industry in the five decades from 1930 to 1980.
