L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2018 www.italoamericano.org 12 L'Italo-Americano CHIARA D'ALESSIO T hink of the golden age of Hollywood, of thos e marvelous movies we still watch today with a sense of longing for a time of style, ele- gance and deeper, clearer feel- ings. Think of the algid eyes of Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, of her perfectly coiffed hair, of the dark hands omenes s of Humphrey Bogart. Or of classic images of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany and the glo- rious ones of 1950s biblical movies like Exodus. Think of all that, and what comes to your mind? M ovie stills, of course; music, very likely, but also, I am sure, those amazing posters, either in vivid colors or in black and white, with drawings more real than reality, children of a hand blessed with talent and an eye made to recognize and reproduce beauty to perfection. Not many know that very hand was Italian, and it belonged to S ilvano Campeggi. Campeggi' s name sadly returned to front pages in Italy about a month ago, when he passed away, aged 95, in Flo- rence, the same city where he was born. Campeggi learnt the basics of artistic creation in his hometown's Istituto d'Arte di Porta Romana, where he studied under Ottone Rosai and Ardengo Soffici, the latter known for his relations with the great creative minds of those times, including Picasso, Braque and Apollinaire, whom he had met in Paris. How- ever, Campeggi's love for art was born at home: his own father, a typographer, was the one who introduced a young Sil- vano to the beauty of drawing and illustration. Young and talented, Campeg- gi met America for the first time shortly after the end of the Sec- ond World War when, at the age of 22, he obtained a job with the American Red Cross as a sol- diers' portraitist. It certainly was love at first sight, because the couple Campeggi- USA was to last for a lifetime. Indeed, the hours spent sketching young sol- diers about to return home served Campeggi to learn all that he needed about American cinema and culture: he was besotted. However Nano, as he was familiarly called, knew he had to move to the capital if he wanted to earn his bread with art and continue to cultivate his newly found passion for cinema. In Rome, he met Orfeo Tamburi, a painter and, even more impor- tantly, cartellonista and illustra- tor Luigi Martinati, a Florentine just like him. Thanks to their artistic union, Campeggi realized he wanted to be a movie illustra- tor, too, and created his first poster for Riccardo Freda's Aquila Nera (1946), a box office hit inspired by Aleksandr Puškin's Dubrovskij and pro- duced by Dino de Laurentiis. His work didn't go unnoticed and he was contacted shortly after by Metro Goldwyn Mayer, which commissioned a poster for the 1939 classic Gone with the Wind. It was the beginning of a career that was to span over three decades and produced more than 3000 movie posters, all related to the best and most popular of Hol- lywood's golden age produc- tions. Among them, the already mentioned Casablanca and Breakfast at Tiffany, but also Singing in the Rain, Ben Hur, West Side Story and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: all iconic, all beautifully executed. In the 1970s, Campeggi decided to return to Florence: the era of golden Hollywood had dawned and it was time to seek new artistic avenues of expres- sion. At the end of the 1980s, however, his own city decided to dedicate a retrospective to his American works, creating a rise of interest in his art, so much so the exhibition was proposed also in Paris and New York. Since then, Campeggi's Hollywood production never stopped being on show in one corner or the other of the world, a true testa- ment not only to his talent, but also to the truly iconic status of his movie posters. If it's true that Campeggi's heart and artistic soul certainly lies in his Hollywood works, it should be certainly remembered he produced a plethora of other pieces, of equal beauty and sensi- tivity. Starting from the end of the 1990s, in particular, Campeg- gi developed an interest in the traditions and cultural symbols of his own region, Tuscany, creat- ing 35 paintings dedicated to cal- cio Fiorentino, an early version of football, in 1997 and, in 2001, painting the drappellone for the Palio dell'Assunta in Siena. In 2008, he dedicated yet another beautiful collection to another immense Tuscan artist, Giacomo Puccini, in occasion of his 150th birthday: a series of portraits of the composer's operatic heroines. Campeggi's work is vivid and vibrant, just like the movies he so much loved. His posters are beautiful and soulful, always a perfect capsule of the true essence of the movie they wanted to represent. In an art world filled with often unnecessary complex- ities, Campeggi's own style brings it all back to where it all began: beauty. Because what else should art be, if not beauty? And beauty it is, in the eyes of his Elizabeth Taylor on the Italian poster for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; in the sketched, yet perfect curves of Audrey Hepburn's lips on that for Breakfast at Tiffany. And Paris is all there, charming and tempting, in the intertwining lines of a grey Tour Eiffel and a - quite aptly - red Moulin Rouge, on the illustration for An Ameri- can in Paris. He is remembered with affec- tion and respect by the mayor of Florence, Dario Nardella, who wrote on Twitter Nano was "a great artist, sensitive and genial at once, who brought the name of Florence all over the world thanks to his movie posters. He, who painted so many devils, today returns among his angels. Farewell, Nano." Equally touch- ing the words of Francesco Casi- ni, mayor of Bagno a Ripoli, Campeggi's final resting place: "Nano has been one of the few artists between the 20th and 21st century to root his own work into a constant search for new cre- ative stimuli, able to produce interest and curiosity around his art. Art that spaced from his memorable Hollywood movie posters to representations of the history of his region, Tuscany." Campeggi's recognizable style became synonym with Hollywood Golden Era Sivano Campeggi, a Tuscan man, was inspired by his land to which he dedicated several works © Gianni Pasquini | Dreamstime.com Campeggi always managed to represent the true heart of the movie in his posters The hand that drew Hollywood for the world: Silvano Campeggi LIFE PEOPLE MOVIES MUSIC BOOKS

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