Giovanni Pintori (1912 – 1999) Italian Graphic Design

Italian graphic designer Giovanni Pintori (1912–1999) is best known for his advertising work with Olivetti. In particular, his posters for the Lettera 22 and the Olivetti logo are renowned for their use of geometric shapes and minimalist design.

Early life and education

He was the fifth child out of six born to a dairy worker father and a homemaker mother on July 14, 1912, in Tresnuraghes, Sardinia. Pintori worked as a typist in 1927 while residing in Sardinia until 1930. He frequently visited a gallery run by photographer Piero Pirari while working as a typewriter operator. Pintori started attending the Higher Institute for Artistic Industries (ISIA) in 1930 after Pirari advised him to apply for a scholarship there. Along with Salvatore Fancello and Costantino Nivola, Pintori was awarded the scholarship. Elio Palazzo, the ISIA’s director and a professor of descriptive geometry, was Pintori’s professor during his time there. Some of his other notable professors were Giuseppe Pagano, Edoardo Persico, and Marcello Nizzoli. Pintori began working on a project at ISIA for the Aosta Valley town planning scheme, and it was through this project he met Olivetti’s Renato Zveteremich. He created an exhibition for the VIIth Milan Triennial in 1940 in partnership with the poet and engineer Leonardo Sinisgalli, which won the Grand Prize for exhibition design.

Work with Olivetti

Pintori joined the Italian typewriter manufacturer Olivetti, established in 1908, after graduating in 1936. Before starting as the art director in 1950, he worked in the advertising division. From 1951 to 1969, Pintori was in charge of creating Olivetti’s advertisements, posters, and calendars. For each year’s calendar, he chose a group of twelve paintings. Henri Rousseau was honoured in the first calendar, and Nanban art was the subject of the final one. Following the “Olivetti: design in industry” exhibition held in the Museum of Modern Art in October–November 1952, Pintori won recognition on a global scale. This exhibit was referred to as “Industry’s new approach to art” by The New York Times.

Giovanni Pintori was the recipient of many awards while working at Olivetti:

• The Gold Medal for advertising by the Federazione Italiana pubblicità (1950);
• The Certificate of Excellence in the Graphic Arts by the American Institute for Graphic Arts (1955);
• The Gold Medal by the Milan Trade Fair and the First Prize Diploma by Linea Grafica (1956);
• The Grand Prize at the XIth Triennial in Milan (1957);
• The Typographic Excellence Award from the New York Directors Club (1962);
• The Certificate of Merit from the New York Art Directors Club (1964).

Later Work

Due to disagreements with the company’s new management, Pintori decided to leave Olivetti in 1967, seven years after Adriano Olivetti’s passing.

He held a solo exhibition in 1967 at Tokyo’s Design Committee Gallery. Pintori opened his studio after leaving Olivetti and started working as a freelance designer out of Milan. He kept working as a freelancer for Olivetti while also doing work for many other businesses in the Milan area. He created covers for books and magazines, such as Successo and I racconti (Stories) by Bigiaretti. He also worked on the 1980 advertising campaign for Merzario S.p.A., which would be his final advertising project before he passed away. Among his clients were Ambrosetti, SIRTI, Ufficio Moderno, and Gabbianelli.

Up until the conclusion of the Merzario campaign, he would work in design. After that, he would only paint. However, many of Pintori’s later paintings are little known because he kept his work private. His paintings have appeared in some of his design projects for advertising agencies throughout his career. However, he stopped using graphic design in his work and instead incorporated many images of perpetual motion into his work. Only one public exhibition of Pintori’s artwork took place in Milan in 1981. He would stay in Milan until his 87th birthday on November 15, 1999, when he passed away.

Style

Pintori’s minimalistic aesthetic is most well-known for its use of colour and geometric shapes. Instead of creating a replica of an object, many of his designs focused on simplified versions of existing objects. Pintori created his sign language, using symbols like a bird, flower, ship, letter, and number.

Giovanni Pintori “succeed in fostering the perception of lightness and transportability through images of pure suggestion, from the flight of a bird to a sailing ship composed of letters, numbers, and punctuation marks – and subsequently suggesting swift ocean crossings, or the association of the typewriter with the lightness of a feather,” as noted by M. Sironi. As a result, he could depict products in his advertising with solid imagery and straightforward colouring. Regarding his design method, Pintori said: “I do not attempt to speak on behalf of the machines. Instead, I have tried to make them speak for themselves through the graphic presentation of their elements, their operations and their use.”

Sources

Barnicoat, J. (1972). A concise history of posters: 1870-1970. H.N. Abrams. Retrieved September 28, 2022, from https://archive.org/details/concisehistoryof0000john_n3r0/page/118/mode/2up?q=%22Giovanni+Pintori%22.

Booth-Clibborn, E., & Baroni, D. (1980). The language of graphics. H.N. Abrams. Retrieved September 28, 2022, from https://archive.org/details/languageofgraphi0000boot/page/150/mode/2up?q=%22Giovanni+Pintori%22.

Byars, M., & Riley, T. (2004). The design encyclopedia. Laurence King Publishing. https://amzn.to/3ElmSlL

Pintori, G. (2015). Giovanni Pintori. Moleskine. Retrieved September 28, 2022, from https://amzn.to/3Chf4Tq.

Wikipedia contributors. (2021, July 19). Giovanni Pintori. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 10:58, September 28, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Giovanni_Pintori&oldid=1034418716

Wrede, S., & Oldenburg, R. E. (1988). The modern poster. Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved September 28, 2022, from https://archive.org/details/modernposter0000muse/page/34/mode/2up?q=%22Giovanni+Pintori%22.

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