The certainties of a formative apprenticeship and experiences of studying abroad, in good, highly structured schools, brought confidence and guided Simonetta Ferrante’s professional and artistic skills. The discipline and precision of graphic design has been flanked over time by free expressive research into sign-lettering and calligraphy-image. Ferrante’s visual thinking expresses a poetic tension and a musical brio in a perpetual continuum. The message and the vision are a space where footprints, signs, letters and figures gravitate suspended in the secret magma of conception and the artist alone is capable of seizing the moment to capture them, select them and offer them to the world. The exhibition privileges Simonetta Ferrante’s calligraphic expression in artist’s books, which clearly highlight her very personal and artistically evocative handling.
Simonetta Ferrante (Milan, 1930), from a very early age, maintained working relationships and friendships with the leading exponents of the international circle of graphic artists, designers and photographers present in Milan and beyond. She began working in graphic design with Max Huber, attended the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London on the advice of Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, worked with Bob Noorda, then with Bruno Munari, collaborated with Giovanna Graf and Carlo Pollastrini for Esselunga Supermarkets, Galgano, Fotorex, Elettrocarbonium, 3M-Minnesota, Mondadori, Rizzoli and DataControl. After taking courses with Cecil Collins, John Epstein, Dennis Creffield and Bertel Isaac, she devoted herself to engraving, painting, collage, artist’s books, installations, and was also fascinated by calligraphic art.
In 1990 she opened the Centro dell’Immagine e dell’Espressione in Milan, in which Mario Raciti, Rebecca Forster, Lucia Pescator, Marco Magrini, Renata Boero and Adriano Antolini were appointed to hold courses. She sees the fields of graphic art and calligraphy as complementary, phases of a single artistic poetic aimed at the study of sign, colour, rhythm and writing: between graphics, design, art and calligraphy.
Works by the author in institutional collections: AIAP Archive, Milan, Centro Internazionale d’Arte e Grafica, CIAG, Chiasso.
