AG Fronzoni

Angelo Giuseppe Fronzoni, known as AG Fronzoni (San Mommè of Pistoia, 1923 – Milan, 2002), was an Italian graphic designer, publisher, industrial designer, architect and educator.

Biography

"I think it's the duty of each of us to bring culture to where it is needed to be it the provinces or the outskirts... and spread it to the poorest who might have lesser access to information. The culture of a country is measured by the culture from the last man of that country, it is the media that matters. Task and duty of every person is to advertise the culture. My life goal is to help the people of Italy." (AG Fronzoni^[1])

AG Fronzoni was born in Pistoia in 1923.

Fronzoni was a designer and architect who made his work and life a primary source of inspiration. Intransigent and uncompromising, his strong and original researchers has ranged across all sectors articulating a philosophy of "minimalism" based on the synthesis and subtraction that is in the phrase of Mies van der Rohe, "Less is more" the starting point of his thought deeply rationalist. For Fronzoni, the superfluous, the excess, the redundancy are defined as "waste" in terms of aesthetics, moral and ethical He began working in Brescia in 1949 as a self-taught graphic designer. In 1947, he founded a magazine called La Punta which he directed and designed until 1965. During the 1950s he moved to Milan and opened there a new office. In 1968 he started to teach at the Scuola Umanitaria in Milan, dedicating himself to the art direction of the school magazine called "u", characterised by a very small heading, set in lowercase 8 pts Haas Unica.

Teaching

During the 1970s he taught at the ISIA of Urbino and the Istituto di Comunicazione Visiva in Milan. In 1982 he founded his own school-atelier in Milan, La Bottega, where he taught until 2001.

The "Bottega"

With the "Bottega", he develops a new type of teaching, far from models of vocational schools, but immensely rich compared to trade and the relationships established with the students. Fronzoni for the project comes to life from reality: every event is subject to design analysis and practice of provocation is always pushing to the comparison, the reflection and the formation of a critical sense. Education, like all other forms of social communication, is essential for Fronzoni.

"My ambition is not to design a poster, it's designing men. »

The philosophy

"The deeper meaning of the design is not so much to build a house, how to build it ourselves. Design their own existence is a commitment that must be our main concern, and this commitment must be total and continuous, non-drinker and relative. »

Fronzoni believes in the ability to transform the world through the design and the design through culture. Kind and decent, he does not hesitate to fight with great energy to the sense of form, attributing responsibility salvific, even if it comes to defending a tiny typeface. The little historic influence in Italy of the Bauhaus makes him maintain an attitude of critical and uncompromising standing what is conventional, formal and conformist, which is reflected in its particular way of life transgression, a transgression absolutely "governed rather than disobedient".

Black & White

The philosophy of the Enlightenment and anthropocentric leads him to consider the white and black as the colours representative of the design of man, the mirror of his rationality and culture, while the colour belongs to the natural world and is so alien, but not as an alternative to the work of man. Consistent his projects graphics and design reflect this philosophy: the rigour of the contrast of white and black, the ratio of dynamic tension between full and empty express it's an iconic conceptual purity. The poster is the space of freedom of thought, without limits or rules, the goal is to call the intellect observer effort constructive interpretation. The typefaces are for Fronzoni the "grammar" of graphic design: small if you have to emphasise the space of reading if you are thinking are large, cut, scored, manipulated. The cage graphics are apparently free although anarchy pagination -i blocks are an additional tool for communication- perceives research and intellectual rigour. In his researches each element that stimulates the viewer to not be passive, turning the paper, combine the pages, to "act" with our critical faculties and imagination. It is important to move forward with the transgression:

"The symmetry of the past, while the asymmetry is modern, because it is dynamic, and a staple for contemporary design. What has been done not only is modern: it is the mirror of a society is not advanced."

Projects

Casabella: During the mid-sixties, Fronzoni and Alessandro Mendini were responsible for the visual language and layout of one of the most important magazines on architecture: "Casabella." Fronzoni's approach as art director shaped its style and content. The issues published between 1965 and 1967, under his direction can be considered a radical reinterpretation of the at that time already established Swiss style. Each cover featured a tiny masthead accompanied by one picture printed in a single colour. The arrangement of the image gave a preview of the grid Fronzoni used for the pages inside. The upper quarter of the page was reserved for headlines. The rest of the page was based on an asymmetric layout with text starting on the left column and pictures spreading alongside over two columns. The whole magazine was typeset in Helvetica. After two years of successful collaboration, when the editor Gian Antonio Bernasconi asked Fronzoni to redesign the magazine he resigned.

Selected Projects in the Field of Industrial Design

• "Quadra" lamp was designed in 1962 and went into production in 2002.
• "Form Zero 63+65" suitcase series designed in 1963 and 1965 to contain six suites.
• "Series '64" is a furniture line (bed, tables, chair, lounge chair). Fronzoni employed it in most of his interior design and architectural projects, as well as in his Bottega school. Series '64 is produced by Capellini to this day.

After realising the layout of the museum of Walser culture to Alagna (prize Zanotti Bianco), Genoa had restoration of Palazzo Balbi Senarega, headquarters of the Institute of History of Art at the University of Genoa and of the Orangerie White Palace, home of the modern art gallery. Always in Genoa, directs the restructuring of the art gallery "The Figurehead", which will also be responsible for the graphics of the catalogues, and the design of the image culture "Art and City". In Pavia is called by Marco Fraccaro to restore the stables of the College Cairoli, now an exhibition space of the University. He designed the corporate image of various companies and its work is acknowledged and exhibited in major museums such as the MoMA in New York. Its unmistakable imprint remains perfectly minimalist current. Many works are part of permanent collections: the Bibliothèque Nationale and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, in Kunstgewerbe Museum in Zurich, in the Musée Cantonal des beaux-arts de Lausanne, in Deutsches Bucherei Leipzig, Deutsches Plakat Museum in Essen, in the Muzeum Narodowe Warsaw, in Morovska Galerie in Brno, in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

Bibliography

• Pierluigi Cerri (editor), Il campo della grafica italiana (Rassegna n. 6, 1981), pp. 68–72.
• Luigi Giordano, Trasgredisco, dunque sono, in il Mattino, 3 September 1988, p. 15.
• Giorgio Fioravanti, Leonardo Passarelli, Silvia Sfligiotti, La Grafica in Italia, Milano, Leonardo Arte, 1997, pp. 128–129.
• Aldo Colonetti e Andrea Rauch (editors), Epoca 1945-1999. Manifesti tra vecchio secolo e nuovo millennio, Siena, Protagon, 1999, pp. 76–77.
• Marco Belpoliti, L'uomo che comunicava con gli spazi vuoti, in La Stampa, 15 February 2002, p. 27.
• Marco Belpoliti, Democrazia grafica di AG Fronzoni, in Alias supplemento a il manifesto, 2 March 2002, p. 5.
• Franco Bertoni, Minimalist Design, Birkhauser Architecture, 2004, ISBN 978-3-7643-6506-6.
• Felix Studinka, Schwarz und Weiß / Black and White, Lars Muller Publishers, 2004, ISBN 978-3-03778-014-5.
• Mikado Koyanagi, BOOK DESIGN OF GRAPHIC DESIGNERS IN THE WORLD, Tokyo, PIE Books, 2007, ISBN 978-4894445154.
• Gabriele Oropallo, "Design as a Language without Words: AG Fronzoni" in Grace Lees-Maffei (ed), Writing Design: Words and Objects, Oxford: Berg, 2012, ISBN 978-1-84788-955-3.
• Ester Manitto, A lezione con AG Fronzoni. Dalla didattica della progettazione alla didattica di uno stile di vita / A lesson with AG Fronzoni. From teaching design to designing lifestyle, plug_in, 2012, ISBN 978-88-95459-10-3.

References