An Off-the-Cuff Reflection on Italo

A tribute to Italo Lupi (1934 – 2023) in the words of Mario Piazza.

The news of Italo Lupi’s death saddens us greatly. This is not the place for historical analysis, it is just an off-the-cuff reflection, the need to sound out today some traits of his personality as a designer.

His graphic design was like attending one of those football matches where an absolutely great team plays (for example, Pelé’s Brazil). You see them play and you marvel at the easy pace, the absolute control of the field, the skills of the imaginative players. It is as though the opponents do not exist: they disappear before such fluency, such ease of execution, such cheerful musicality. The goal is a foregone conclusion. Reviewing Italo’s projects as a whole – for example the enormous body of work created for Triennale Milano – the feeling is the same. Lupi organised a visual layout, rich in references, modular but not schematic, capable of accommodating multiple stimuli. One perceives a sense of rigour achieved and resolved upstream, in order to leave ample freedom of action and movement. To allow the zest of managing the visual plane with flexibility and subtractive discretion.

Lupi was also the author of the Triennale Milano’s institutional logo, which was the winner in an invitation-only competition. A highly-qualified jury justified its choice in part for the heraldic matrix, which was instead criticised by the press (“Immobile, clumsy, yet a winner” was the headline run by Il Sole 24 Ore, for example). In reality, after years and years of use and numerous changes in the orientation and cultural policy of the institution, as well as the renovation and reorganisation of its very buildings, this logo held up until 2019.

And the entire visual device designed at the time also worked because it was elegantly authoritative, an ‘open’ work, in which the director’s touch constitutes the keystone of the system, but rests on a very well-designed formal structure. This image is not at all dressed up as a ‘design institution’, but is expressively playful, curious and inventive. In Lupi’s graphics, the original lines (or rather the sentiment) of Italian graphics merged perfectly: a construction of the page, advertisement or space using a generative grammar that is imaginative and full of colour, and a narrative brilliance, which plays across the board, that is always surprising and enchanting. The skill of the imaginative players, in other words. Knowing how to move in these territories was a gift and having done so with method and passion, kindness and measure will remain a great guarantee for the future of graphic design, including the Italian school.