Art+Design
5vie selection
physical event
To A G Fronzoni
“Un raggio di sole” (A ray of sunshine)
A ray of death rises from the earth stopped by a ray of sunshine, this is how the poetics of A G Fronzoni reveals in one of his most significant posters, emblematic example of a minimalist and ecologic communication reaching the intellect, the heart and the gut of all of us.
A G Fronzoni (1923-2002) transformed the communication into art, especially through the posters. It’s not a casualty that the majority of them have been acquired by the Moma in New York, one of the international sanctuaries of modern and contemporary art.
His posters have such a communicative power that often the lines between communication and its object disappear, without ever overshadowing the latter. Indeed, if anything, enhancing it the most. Certainly, in order to seize and decode this value, the observer must be willing to look to understand, to crave with the eyes, to move away to have an overview and to move closer to grasp revealing details, to penetrate the different layers of communication in order to catch also the poetical, social and political relevance.
The art of A G Fronzoni was almost always oriented towards the visual narration of others’ works. This didn’t prevent him from designing and realizing a poster for himself on the occasion of an exhibition dedicated to him by the Reinhold gallery in New York in November 1993. Who knows how he must have felt while conceiving this poster. We like to think that it was a bit like bringing the communicator on the artist’s couch or vice versa.
A G Fronzoni was a complete designer ranging from the graphic communication to design, museum installations and architecture. Every urban space, both residential and public, every object of use, every communication, was the result of thinking and planning with the firm conviction that essentiality and beauty could revolutionise and improve life and relationships. It is no coincidence that large part of his activity was dedicated to students’ education and formation.
The Leonardi V-Idea archive wants to give ample testimony of all of this with the Un raggio di sole exhibition. The title comes from one of the posters of A G Fronzoni conceived in 1980 for a folder published by the Italian newspaper L’Unità which included the work of other 9 artists called upon to realise an artwork against the war. This poster was not only the leading image of the exhibition, but it also turned out to be particularly fitting for the context where the exhibition took place: DiDe (Design District) June 17-21 2021, which found its central topic in green, so the sun is en extreme source of life, including the green colour.
The exhibition was curated and created by Maura Bassi, Gianfranco Pangrazio e Marco Villani.Photos by Zoe Giordano and Giannina Olimpia Municinò.
