The exhibition curated by Mario Piazza – professor at the Design Department, Design School of the Milan Polytechnic – and by Nicoletta Ossanna Cavadini, director of the max museum and of Spazio Officina in Chiasso, with the sponsorship of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation international, organized with the contribution of the Department of Education and Cultural Activities of the Municipality of Chiasso, of Rinascente as main sponsor, with the support of the Republic and Canton of Ticino-Swisslos Fund, of AGE SA and of the friends of the max museum association, is part of the 2016-2017 season of the Centro Culturale Chiasso, which is declined in the name of "creativity".
The exhibition analyzes the various areas covered in the centenary history of La Rinascente: from art at the service of advertising to billboards, from designed graphics to packaging as a communication system, from set-ups to the culture of theatrical presentation of goods, from classic advertising to the innovative system of the design.
The exhibition itinerary begins in the early 1921s, when La Rinascente stands out for the novelty and elegance that characterize its advertising image. It will be Marcello Dudovich, who conveyed the image of a dynamic and elegant woman, who accompanied the growth successes of la Rinascente for more than thirty years (from 1956 to XNUMX). The posters of the artist from Trieste will be joined by those of other great artists such as Leopoldo Metlicovitz, Achille Luciano Mauzan, Aldo Mazza, Mario Bazzi, the MAGA agency and Georges Monestier.
The department store is conceived as a "feminine kingdom": it is almost exclusively women who buy, sell, serve and are served. And even the réclame is mainly represented by women. The women featured in Dudovich's manifestos, with clear references to Liberty and then to Art Déco, are charming, carefree, modern and unattainable; images that will also find more and more space in catalogues, billboards, shop windows, brochures, leaflets and leaflets. This is how the new advertising types established themselves, which from the XNUMXs communicated thanks also to new printing techniques, with the frequent inclusion of photography. New authors join Dudovich, such as Gino Boccasile, Alfredo Lalia, Renato Vernizzi, Walter Resentera and Nanni Schipani.
By now becoming a large chain present throughout Italy, in 1929 La Rinascente published the house organ "Echi della Rinascente" which in 1936 would become "La Famiglia Rinascente-Upim", then "Cronache" with the subtitle "Review of life and work in department stores".
In the pages of this periodical, created for employees, the many activities of the department store will be published to make the exhibitions ever more innovative, knowing how to present the goods and manage the advertising campaigns. The intention was thus to offer a sort of "democratization" of consumption, investigating new needs and carrying out a continuous search for significant collaborations. These were the years in which Gio Ponti designed for La Rinascente, together with Emilio Lancia, a line of furnishings with the aim of renewing the image of the typical bourgeois house; through the Domus Nova brand modern furniture was thus produced and put on sale at reasonable prices, with the intention of contributing to the rejuvenation of society and the diffusion of the international taste of the Modern Style.
La Rinascente begins to experiment with collaborations with external designers; from the beginning of the XNUMXs, the combination of corporate graphics and industrial design will therefore become the hallmark of the department store.
The second post-war period opens with the deep wound of the destruction of the headquarters in Piazza Duomo in Milan, but also with a strong will to rebuild. On December 4, 1950, the department store reopened with the interiors and furnishings designed by the architect Carlo Pagani, where an entire floor was dedicated to furnishings. A new phase is starting for la Rinascente in which the drive for reconstruction and the subsequent economic boom are exploited with entrepreneurial wisdom. In this period, the new logo was also launched with the “lR” monogram created by the young Swiss graphic designer Max Huber, introducing a change of pace in the image.
Rinascente – Novelties of the season, 1940, chromolithographic proof of poster print, 24,4 x 17,8 cm
Rossella Villani private collection
Geometry, photography, linear typographic characters, chromatic stamps and overprints represent the graphic avant-garde of what will become the "Milanese style", an inventive mix capable of uniting the best Italian graphic designers with others from all over the world in a vision of strong internationalisation.
The department store in those years was directed by Cesare Brustio, Aldo Borletti, Alfredo Ceriani and Gianni Bordoli. The search for entrepreneurial success is aimed at identifying a sort of "pedagogy" of consumption which will arrive in 1953 at the exhibition "The aesthetics of the product", curated by Carlo Pagani, Bruno Munari and Alberto Rosselli, then evolving into the exhibition-award for the “Compasso d'oro” industrial design, conceived by Gio Ponti and Alberto Rosselli in collaboration with Marco Zanuso, Albe Steiner and Augusto Morello, then head of the Development Office of la Rinascente.
After an experimental phase with Max Huber for communication and Albe Steiner for window dressing, the Advertising Office will operate until the XNUMXs under the artistic direction of Amneris Latis Liesering and then Adriana Botti. Internal graphics and many freelance designers will work with them in a climate of strong international exchanges, in which the Zurich-Milan axis appears to be privileged.
These designers are joined by important photographers, such as Aldo Ballo, Ugo Mulas, Gérard Herter, Serge Libiszewski, William Klein, Jeanloup Sieff and Oliviero Toscani.
At the same time as the exhibition at the max museum in Chiasso, at Palazzo Reale in Milan, “lR100. RENAISSANCE. Stories of innovation” (from 24 May to 24 September 2017) which traces the history of department stores, curated by Sandrina Bandera and Maria Canella.
Image Cover: Max Huber, La Rinascente – For everyone's summer, 1954, advertising poster, offset print, photo Sergio Libis, 70 x 100 cm Max Huber Archive
