Student Research Travel Grant Report

27 July 2015 -

The DHS Student Research Travel Grant funded a three-week-long field trip to Milan during which I visited several archives, private collections and libraries and interviewed key protagonists of post-war Italian graphic design. The main intent of the research trip was to collect archival documents and visual material, and consult primary and secondary literature for the third chapter of my PhD thesis. The latter aims at exploring the professionalization of graphic design in Italy from the 1930s to the 1950s by looking at design education, professional practices and mediating channels, such as exhibitions and specialist magazines. In particular, Chapter 3 – ‘Exhibiting the Modern Taste’ – explores the way in which Italian graphic designers used the Milan Triennale in the interwar period as a showcase to promote the discipline, claim a social status for the profession and market their products. By looking at the 5th, the 6th and the 7th Milan Triennale of 1933, 1936 and 1940 as case studies, the chapter contextualises the international event within the debate on the education of the client’s taste and on the modernization of Italian graphics. The chapter will also argue that the Milan Triennale is crucial for understanding of the professionalization of graphic design in Italy in the twentieth century.

The Archivio Storico at the Triennale Museum in Milan was the main source of visual material and archival documents, and thanks are due to the archive manager, Tommaso Tofanetti, for his help and patient collaboration. Further material was collected at the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense and at the Biblioteca Comunale Centrale Palazzo Sormani. Both libraries hold an extensive collection of specialist magazines and trade journals – Campo Grafico, Risorgimento Grafico, Graphicus, Industria della Stampa, Ufficio Moderno, Domus and Casabella – which I consulted thoroughly in order to provide evidence of the lively debate around the Milan Triennale that engaged graphic professionals and theorists over a decade, from the early 1930s to the outbreak of the Second World War.

During my stay in Milan, I also collected primary source material and consulted secondary literature that I will explore in later chapters of my PhD thesis. I visited the Associazione Centro Studi Grafici where I collected material about the Centro Studi Grafici and interviewed the graphic designer and chairman of the association, Massimo Dradi. Furthermore, I researched Antonio Boggeri and his Milanese graphic design studio, the Studio Boggeri. I visited Boggeri’s private archive (Meride, Switzerland) and interviewed Boggeri’s daughter and son-in-law, Anna Boggeri and Bruno Monguzzi. Finally, I made a preliminary visit to the AIAP (Associazione Italiana Design della Comunicazione Visiva), and arranged a further visit during the Autumn Term 2015 in order to consult the association’s archive.

Thanks to the DHS Student Research Travel Grant, I collected an extended body of material that will be the subject of Chapter 3 of my PhD thesis. Moreover, the award enabled me to undertake initial visits to archives and private collection in order to scope the collections’ contents and arrange future visits and meetings that will take place over the next academic year.

Chiara Barbieri