1_BM_Chiasso240x240_Saggi:Layout 1
3.5.2011
12:07
Pagina 4
the entangled fly.It is so that, upon Boggeri’s instigation, began for me the slow, long, difficult hunt, in the sterilized universe of a Swiss education, for an improbable fly. Having to de-sterilize rigor was one more unexpected problem. Besides the anonymous information we should also integrate that Cassandrian “spectacle dans la rue” which he, a sophisticated middle class man, with a slight accent from Pavia constantly demanded. A “mise en scène” instead of a “mise en page”. In front of me, behind very thick glasses and in the midst of a permanent buzzing, sat Aldo Calabresi who, myopic as he was—to my great admiration and envy—was a master at catching flies. His work—like that of Max Huber, who had been called by Boggeri to Milan in 1940—sharply marked the fusion of the two cultures, the Swiss, logical and constructive, and the Italian, poetic and libertarian. It is mostly thanks to him that a little fly or two began to fly on my side, infringing eventually upon my painstakingly constructed web. Leaving to the Freudians the broken grid, it is this fly, apparently, the identity that I have been trying to achieve in my work ever since. Identity which is probably rooted in this little triangle of Swiss land invading Italian soil, where people seem to be too Italian to be Swiss, and too Swiss to be considered truly Italians. Ten years later—except for Max Huber Mr. Boggeri always complained about the slowness of his Swiss collaborators—I fell in love with Anna, his daughter, and this time my love was not in the least platonic. Meanwhile I had lectured on Gestalt psychology and typographic design at the Cini Foundation inVenice, I had designed for Dino Gavina (who had just started re-editing the Marcel Breuer classics), I had worked on the advertising for the new revolutionary IBM “golf ball” typewriter, planned nine pavilions for Expo ‘67 in Montréal and set the typographical standards for a small new publishing house in Milan.The modesty and honesty of this typographic work were, to my surprise, honored by the italians with the Bodoni Prize in 1971, a prize that was to prove contagious. Since then I have been busy with exhibit and book design, dealing with museums here and in Paris, but mostly with teaching, here, in the States and then around the world. AtYale University, whereTom Strong had presented some of my posters, a student asked for a definition of our profession. An essential aspect, I said, is the “transcription” of matters. I encouraged him to deeply analyze the nature of two professions he certainly knew well enough, significantly akin to ours: the one of the translator and, as Lissitskij had done in 1925, the one of the orator, of the actor. Naturally the actor has a body, a voice, but he needs to “re-invent” them in order to “lend” them to the character to which he is going to give life. Obviously there are roles that we are not able to play, and there are plays that we are not willing to interpret. The last time I saw Antonio Boggeri was in Santa Margherita Ligure, in 1989, shortly before his death. He was very weak, lying in bed, with the late sun cutting the room. I was sitting by him, we were talking about our profession. I was telling him that I was feeling responsible for the mistakes only, the rest had happened the way it was bound to happen, as the inevitable consequence of the design process, with its inner logic that we only have to comply with. He took my right hand in his hands—which seemed cold— and asked: “Bruno, what is the best thing you have ever done?” Since he was a lucid critic I was trying to find in my mind a piece of work without any substantial or marginal error and realized that what I do remember of my work are in fact the mistakes. So I was delaying the answer. He answered for me: “To marry Anna”. I have done two more beautiful things, with her. A son, whose name is Nicolas, in memory of Cassandre, who had tragically passed away two years before, and a daughter, named Elisa, in honour of Hans Werner Henze, whom I had just discovered. Now they are grown up, they live far away. I live with Anna in a large house looking South, the house where they grew up and from where, on clear days, one can see Milan. From time to time the house revives, the rooms get filled, their voices and the voices of their children chase each another. I still have fun, once in a while, in communicating for people, in perpetuating those languages that the fashion system systematically wipes away. As Dieter Bachmann once wrote: “I am a lucky man”. Bruno Monguzzi
Bruno Monguzzi Autoritratto, doppia esposizione Londra 1961