Nuoro, the "Olivetti dream" is revealed at Man: the legend of Giovanni Pintori

The brush strokes of color capture the eye. The characters chosen for the graphics recall legendary Olivetti products, such as the Studio 44 or the very popular Lettera 22 used by Indro Montanelli. «We wanted to set up this exhibition to pay homage to one of the greatest Sardinian artists», immediately remarks Chiara Gatti, director of the Man museum in Nuoro. «Giovanni Pintori left the island, very young. Then, he became an artist known and appreciated throughout the world». Here is “Advertising as art”, a monographic exhibition recently inaugurated and open until June 15, curated by Chiara Gatti and Nicoletta Ossanna Cavadini.

The exhibition

Master of Italian and international “graphic design”, Giovanni Pintori has linked his name to the legendary image of Olivetti. Thus, faithful to that research path dedicated to Sardinian authors who have established themselves on the world stage, the Man has decided to enhance the artistic path of Pintori. All possible through a “graphic story”, between modernity of language and enchanting creative choices. In this way, a virtuous path is radiated, set up by the Barbagia museum structure and the max museum of Chiasso, in Switzerland. And in the foreground one objective: to enhance that artist born in 1912 in Tresnuraghes but very tied to the Nuoro origins of his parents. «With Giovanni Pintori we want to send a message of elegance and beauty», says Chiara Gatti: «He was an extraordinary graphic designer, capable of synthesizing in a single image the technological promotion of a large Italian company like Olivetti and, at the same time, the enormous aesthetic research of years in which advertising was elegance».

Works and colors

Three hundred works, including drawings and paintings, original sketches, models, magazine advertising pages, photographs and posters. The white halls of the Nuoro museum reveal 50 years of activity awarded by the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world: from the Palme d'Or of the Italian Advertising Federation (1950) to the prestigious exhibition at the MoMA in New York (1952). Then, from the exhibition at the Louvre in Paris (1955) to the certificate of excellence from the American Institute of Graphic Arts (1955). «Pintori was an absolute genius of advertising graphics, so much so that the famous Japanese magazine “Idea” included him in the register of the thirty most significant designers of the twentieth century», continues Gatti, «clear testimony to his talent and to a success achieved at every latitude».

The Olivetti Dream

A dazzling talent, capable of always condensing, in every single image, form and content. This is why Giovanni Pintori was chosen by an enlightened captain of industry like Adriano Olivetti to convey the name of his company and its products throughout the world. Light, color, composition and creative play: these are his main areas of research, which lead his graphics "to the forefront as a metaphorical unicum of communication", said Paul Rand, the famous American designer who created the IBM logo. The fast rhythm of the fingers on the keys of a typewriter, the free characters, the internal mechanisms of calculators transformed into dynamic and cheerful motifs. These are some of the features of his language and of a true poetics of writing made of elegance and irony. Now on display at the MAN in Nuoro.