The book collects twenty-one short stories, reports of days and meetings, which have in some way conditioned the long and articulated activity of Ugo La Pietra, artist and architect but above all researcher (as he likes to define himself) in the large area that embraces all the communication disciplines.
“Twenty-one memorable days without being exemplary”: this is how Marco Scotini defines it in his introduction, comparing La Pietra’s writing to his graphic work “ideographic, almost as a miniaturist, always fast”.
The stories start in 1963 with Lucio Fontana and the adventures with the members of the Cenobio Group (Agostino Ferrari, Ettore Sordini, Angelo Verga, Arturo Vermi), meander through the Sixties through meetings with Vittoriano Viganò, Nanda Vigo, Sergio Dangelo and other Milanese artists, Edouard Mesens, Paolo Rizzatto, Maria Merz, Gianni Pettena, and continue with the experiences shared with Getulio Alviani and Maurizio Nannucci, Gillo Dorfles, Mila Schön, Alberto Seassaro, Achille Bonito Oliva, Franco Vaccari, Bruno Munari, Alessandro Mendini, Gaetano Pesce, Roberto Orefice, Davide Mosconi, Fernando De Filippi.
Scotini emphasizes: “Yet all the episodes have the same character as their ‘preferential itineraries’, those physical, unconscious and unpredictable traces, which escape what is planned, the consolidated image, the macroscale of compliant and appropriate social behaviors, both to the role rather than the function … “.
They are stories that reveal – thanks to anecdotes sometimes ironic and sometimes bitter – some aspects of people who have contributed to the evolution of Italian art history and design, often contributing to the transformation of our society.
Technical features
15×21 cm
96 pages
Manfredi Edizioni
Marzo 2017
ISBN: 978-88-99519-42-1
Price: 15,00 euro