AIAP Remembers Campo Grafico 90 Years After Its Birth

In Milan, during the 1930s, “Campo Grafico – Journal of aesthetics and graphic technique” marked the most original collective deed of those creative years, when a bunch of “founding fathers” of what will be called “graphic design” – among which Attilio Rossi, Carlo Dradi, Guido Modiano, Luigi Veronesi, Enrico Bona, Ezio D’Errico, Antonio Boggeri and Bruno Munari – guided a real technical and cultural revolution which, when started, paved the way to a completely different approach in combining texts an pictures in graphic art.

The journal’s pages were switching from passionate discussions over modern style and abstractionism in painting to debates over the destiny of architecture, up to ideas over the new typography, the same one presented in the Graphic Arts Section of Germany during the 5th Triennale in 1933 and symbolised by the typeface Futura by Paul Renner.

The journal also immediately became an ideal meeting point for a free exchange of opinions, opened to the intellectual stimulation that had characterised all the European avant-garde movements during the twenties.

Talking about the experience of Campo Grafico, and identifying in that exploit the birth of the modern graphic design in Italy, Attilio Rossi wrote that «all the previous teachings […] would programmatically become a new experimental journal of graphic arts, completely new».

Campo Grafico will be the subject of an evening organised by AIAP (Thursday 23 March 2023, at 6.30 pm, with free admission) in which the discussion will focus on the still ongoing strong influence of that journal on contemporary graphic design.

More Information: aiap.it/aiap-ricorda-la-nascita-di-campo-grafico