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HELLO DESIGN

PENGUIN

MARCO VENTURA WAX EXHIBIT PHOTOGRAPHY ANNUAL 52

July/August 2011 Twenty-Four Dollars www.commarts.com

marco

VENTURA W

by Bonnie Smetts

For this Italian illustrator, “no” in any language is “yes.”

ith a father, mother and two brothers as artists, you’d think being an artist would have come naturally for Marco Ventura. But according to the Italian illustrator, it was the opposite. “I grew up with all the other members of my family who were very talented.

They would draw a line and everyone would say wow. Not so for me.”

When he was young, his artistic family spent summers on their farm in Tuscany. “My two brothers and I passed most of the time drawing and building models of ships and miniature soldiers. We would spend a full week without seeing another person, just sheep and wild animals.” As he got older, vacations included time in his father’s illustration studio where he and his mother had the job of applying watercolors to the senior Ventura’s detailed pen drawings.

By the time he was a teenager, he wanted to be an illustrator too, but when he told his father of his dream, his father encouraged him to try something more technical. “He said maybe I could be a photographer or a designer or an architect. An illustrator, no.” But Ventura wanted to draw and paint.

“I am testardo,” he says. “I am stubborn. Tell me something isn’t possible…” He laughs and shakes his head.

Instead of giving up, he decided to do whatever it took to become an artist. He attended an artsoriented high school and then the Accademia di Brera in Milan. By the time he was accepted to the School of Visual Arts in New York, he had his family’s full support. Ventura spent an important year at sva studying illustration, making contacts and learning English.

When he returned to Italy, he joined his father’s newly formed design firm and honed his type and design skills while he established himself as an illustrator. At that time in Milan, art directors wanted one thing: airbrush. “I told them I painted with oils, and that was not what they wanted to hear.”

However if an illustrator could do watercolor or linocut or line drawings in any style requested— please, a watercolor like Kandinsky—he was still able to get work. Becoming a jack-of-allillustration-styles turned out to be the best internship of all. From myriad experiments in style and media, Ventura’s unique character and technique emerged.

Today when his students at the Istituto Europeo di Design ask about developing their illustration styles, he tells them, “You don’t push button A and then button B and there you have it. It is by doing lots and lots of work that you find it.”

Right: “In 1996, for the first time, a dark-skinned girl is elected Miss Italy.” 63⁄4 director; Time, client.

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Photography Annual 2011

× 8, oil on paper. Kenneth B. Smith, art

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Editorial 1 Trevor Dixon, photographer Michael McCormick, creative director Zoey Sless-Kitain, photography director Philadelphia magazine, client Annual cover story featuring the best of the New Jersey beaches.

2 Jim Norton, photographer Vicki Hornsby, Cottage Life, art director Martine Blackhurst/Ruth Gangbar, stylists Cottage Life, client Sardine story for “Grill Guide,” an annual supplement to the magazine on summer grilling and BBQ recipes.

3 Scott Spiker, photographer Michelle Wolf, art director Men’s Journal, client “Lead photograph for the Notebook adventure travel section of Men’s Journal. The article describes a beautiful sandstone hike through the lower section of Antelope Canyon located on native Navajo land in Arizona, only accessible with a guide and some degree of risk. A flash flood washed through the area in 1997 killing 11 hikers—a few security measures including metal and rope ladders have been added since.”

4 Koichiro Tezuka, Kyodo, photographer Scott McKiernan, ZUMA Press, creative director Newsweek, client Houses of Natori are washed away by massive tsunami waves caused by a powerful earthquake in Japan.

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Photography Annual 2011

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For Sale 1 Jason Edwards, photographer National Geographic Channel/ WorldNomads.com, clients An Antarctic storm descends over a rugged and weathered glacial cap stained by blue and pink algae. “I am the principal photographer and photographic mentor for the World Nomads Photography Scholarship. This image was captured during a field assignment to Antarctica as part of the scholarship program. A selection of images featuring the wild beauty of this polar region is archived in the National Geographic Image Collection for commercial use.”

2 Anthony Kurtz, photographer

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“Shot in an abandoned amusement park in Berlin, this photograph is primarily intended as a fine-art, limited-edition print, signed and numbered in archival pen on the back (Type-C chromogenic print on Fujicolor Crystal Archive Professional Paper).”

3 Jon Love, photographer Stock.

Institutional 4 Laurie Frankel, photographer Stacy Navarro, art director Scott Donnellan, creative director Alessandra Mortola, stylist Roost Home Furnishings, client The front cover of an upscale home design catalog.

Communication Arts

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