SESTO SAN GIOVANNI.- Galleria Campari presents the exhibition BOLD! Typographic Variations of Campari: Munari, Depero, and more) in the museum spaces of Sesto San Giovanni.

Curated by Marta Sironi, the exhibition unveils the extensive repertoire of custom-designed lettering and typographic works preserved in the Galleria Campari Archive. This fresh reinterpretation focuses on the word and its relationship with imagery, showcasing over one hundred and sixty pieces, many of them previously unseen. The exhibition narrates Campari’s longstanding commitment to research and innovative spirit. It begins with the graphic and communicative significance of the name Campari and expands to explore the transformation of words into shapes, culminating in typographic architecture.

The exhibition brings together a selection of works by artists who shaped 20th-century design history, including Bruno Munari, Fortunato Depero, Marcello Nizzoli, Erberto Carboni, George Guillermaz, Sergio Tofano (known as Sto), Primo Sinopico, Giorgio Dabovich, and Nicolay Diulgheroff.

THE EXHIBITION PATH

The starting point of the exhibition project is the famous advertising campaign by Bruno Munari, launched by Campari in November 1964 for the inauguration of the first line of the Milan subway. The artist offers an imaginative solution that presents the brand name broken down and recomposed in a play of possible combinations, merging the Futurist legacy with the pop taste of the Sixties on an iconic red background. This gave rise to Graphic Declination of the name Campari, a motif the artist would revisit twenty years later, creating various versions such as Limits of Legibility of a Logotype (1985) and Dynamic Movements of a Logotype (1985).

In homage to the sixty-year anniversary of Graphic Declination of the name Campari, the exhibition presents a comprehensive analysis of the countless interpretations preserved in the Campari Gallery Archive that led to the brand's expression across dozens of media—from vehicles to boats, rooftops to walls, shop window glass to umbrellas, and even newspapers and magazines.

There is also a dedicated focus on Bruno Munari's work in publishing and graphic interpretation, ranging from his illustrations of the 1930s, such as L'anguria lirica (1934) with text by Tullio d'Albissola, to the covers of books like Le macchine inutili di Bruno Munari (1942).

The exhibition path continues with an in-depth look at the advertising campaigns of the 1920s, which Davide Campari entrusted to the leading illustrators of the time with the aim of distinguishing Campari's ads within pages dense with advertisements.

While Erberto Carboni brought photomontage to the forefront of the brand’s ads, Sergio Tofano (known as Sto) and Angelo Migneco infused calligraphic lettering with a humorous touch. George Guillermaz placed Campari campaigns in sporting contexts, Giorgio Muggiani gave them a sense of sophistication and elegance, while Primo Sinòpico populated them with ethereal figures combining the yellow of Cordial with the red of Bitter. Marcello Nizzoli’s modern still lifes were followed by proposals to transform lettering into architecture by Trieste-born Giorgio Dabovich, along with the aeropainting experiments of Bulgarian Nicolay Diulgheroff.

A leading role is given to the work of Fortunato Depero, who collaborated with Campari from 1926 to 1936. His creations challenge the boundaries between art and advertising, as seen in Palestra tipografica (1931), where the glass, bottle, and Davide Campari’s initials come alive in a dynamic, sonorous typography. Completing the exploration is the Depero futurista book-object, the first example of a self-promotional book featuring typographic experiments, along with two 1937 covers for La Domenica del Corriere, which invited the public to cut out and reassemble the words Campari Soda and Cordial Campari.

An integral part of the exhibition is the dialogue between two figures who drew inspiration from the Futurist movement, with their work presented in the Project Room of Galleria Campari.

Pino Tovaglia (Milan, 1923-1977), a renowned graphic designer of the Milanese school, began his career as a painter before dedicating himself to graphic design in the early 1950s. Between 1964 and 1974, he led a research group on typefaces at Nebiolo in Turin, developing studies on word readability through the overlapping of letters to create three-dimensional and abstract effects. In 1959, with his Codice tondo, he explored the geometric perception of words, an investigation showcased in the exhibition through the works Studio 4 and Studio 9.

In the early 1990s, Lucia Pescador made an artistic turn and challenged herself to draw with her left hand. Since then, the artist has collected fragments of 20th-century art and explored European avant-garde movements, culminating in 2014 with a tribute to Fortunato Depero for the book Depero e la casa del mago. The works created for the book are presented in the exhibition as part of the project Inventario del Novecento con la mano sinistra, which immerses fragments of 20th-century art in Pescador's contemporary poetic vision.

THE RESTORATIONS

For the exhibition, Galleria Campari carried out a series of conservation restoration interventions, bringing to light part of its archival heritage that has never been displayed before. Among the restored works, notable pieces include the Bitter Campari poster from the 1940s, a large blue and yellow lithograph in three panels measuring 96 x 387 cm, which was carefully cleaned and reinforced, and the 1920s poster Il vero Americano esige il Campari by Emilio Greco. Over 150 sketches were cleaned and mounted on conservation materials to ensure better display, many of which had never been exhibited before.

The work Codice Tondo n.4 by Pino Tovaglia, featuring the original overlapping of letters that form different words, underwent targeted restoration to repair the damaged letters.