CAMERA – Centro Italiano per la Fotografia and the Olivetti Historical Archive Association present ‘1969. Olivetti formes et recherche, una mostra internazionale’, an exhibition of a selection of photographs of the namesake international exhibition that Società Olivetti organized in November 1969 in Paris, and which subsequently went to Barcelona, Madrid, Edinburgh, London, and finally to Tokyo in October 1971.
Almost 50 years after the first exhibition, the current exhibition, curated by Barbara Bergaglio, Marcella Turchetti, and Giangavino Pazzola, will be open to the public in the Project Room at CAMERA, in Turin, until February 24, 2019.
With it the curators reconstruct the contents of that historical exhibition, curated by the architect Gae Aulenti, but they also illustrate the stories of the characters that gravitated in and around Società Olivetti and the culture it represent: from Giorgio Soavi to Lord Snowdon, from Ettore Sottsass to Mario Bellini, from Renzo Zorzi to Italo Calvino. Over 70 photographs from the company historical archive, Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti, offer the opportunity to tell the legendary exhibition in its various stages, through photographic services of great masters: Ugo Mulas for the Parisian edition, Alberto Fioravanti and Giorgio Colombo for those of Madrid and Barcelona, and Tim Street-Porter for the one in London. Moreover, the narrative is enriched by the video directed by Philippe Charliat and the catalog by Giovanni Giudici, which is the key to interpreting the languages and compositional techniques used.
‘1969. Olivetti formes et recherche, una mostra internazionale’ develops through the original images of the Archive of Ivrea with the aim to recall the effervescent and dynamic atmosphere of those years. But also to reintroduce a mindset that, with a striking and still vivid modernity, conjugated art, industry, design, production and the creation of value, starting from the world of work.
The exhibition is also a unique opportunity for the public to get to know the great model of responsible business created by the visionary Adriano Olivetti that is embodied in the city of Ivrea, and which has been recognized as UNESCO heritage as an example of the advanced and creative industrial culture.
In the spring of 2019, the exhibition will be transferred to Ivrea, in the spaces of the Museo Civico “P.A. Garda”.
Ilona Catani Scarlett