Remembering Leonardo Sinisgalli
Forty years on from his death, the Pirelli Foundation, MM SpA and its Centrale dell’Acqua, Fondazione Sinisgalli, and Fondazione ISEC remember the “poet-engineer” Leonardo Sinisgalli in a series of 3 meetings entitled “A Mathematical Fury: The Lesson Taught by Leonardo Sinisgalli”. Each event examines a different aspect of the life of this “twentieth-century Leonardo”.
Friday 29 January 2021, from 5 p.m., live on the online channels of the Centrale dell’Acqua di Milano: “Sinisgalli and Milan” with Antonio Calabrò (Pirelli Foundation, MuseImpresa) and Giuseppe Lupo (Università Cattolica, Milan).
Sinisgalli’s relationship with Milan began in 1932, when he arrived in Milan after graduating. He devoted himself to poetry and current affairs publications but above all he began the long association that brought him into the world of big industry and to the assorted group of intellectuals who had gathered around Edoardo Persico. In 1937 he was hired by the Pirelli Group’s Società del Linoleum. This was a brief but decisive step, for the following year he became the director of Olivetti’s technical advertising office in Milan. At Linoleum he met Giuseppe Luraghi, whom he encountered again at Pirelli after the war and together they created two of the most important Italian company magazines: Pirelli. Rivista di informazione e di tecnica (1948) and Civiltà delle Macchine (1953).
Friday 5 February 2021, from 5 p.m., live on the online channels of the Centrale dell’Acqua di Milano: “Sinisgalli and Civiltà delle Macchine”. With Gian Italo Bischi (University of Urbino) and Giorgio Bigatti (Bocconi University, Milan)
In 1950 Sinisgalli published Furor mathematicus, with writings on mathematics, geometry, architecture, arts and crafts, and on technology and the history of science. This was a prelude to Civiltà delle Macchine, the house organ of Finmeccanica which he created in 1953 and directed for five years (32 issues). The magazine was the expression of a multi-disciplinary culture that brought together science, literature and the arts within the framework of an industrial humanism that had a distant antecedent in Carlo Cattaneo’s Politecnico.
Friday 12 February 2021, from 5 p.m., live on the online channels of the Centrale dell’Acqua di Milano: “Sinisgalli the Poet”. With Clelia Martignoni (University of Pavia) and Luca Stefanelli (University of Pavia).
Sinisgalli’s “dual personality” as an engineer and poet began to emerge in his first publications in the 1930s and acquired its complete form in the 1950s. Sinisgalli maintained that poetry is a set of “real numbers” and “imaginary numbers”. There is always something that cannot be understood, something not immediately scientific, and there is always room for the imagination, but there is also much that is part of the real world. Writing poetry means reflecting on existence and on our ability to understand the scientific nature of reality by means of poetic passion. Which is always a controlled passion, and a highly objective filter.
You can follow the live feed here
Forty years on from his death, the Pirelli Foundation, MM SpA and its Centrale dell’Acqua, Fondazione Sinisgalli, and Fondazione ISEC remember the “poet-engineer” Leonardo Sinisgalli in a series of 3 meetings entitled “A Mathematical Fury: The Lesson Taught by Leonardo Sinisgalli”. Each event examines a different aspect of the life of this “twentieth-century Leonardo”.
Friday 29 January 2021, from 5 p.m., live on the online channels of the Centrale dell’Acqua di Milano: “Sinisgalli and Milan” with Antonio Calabrò (Pirelli Foundation, MuseImpresa) and Giuseppe Lupo (Università Cattolica, Milan).
Sinisgalli’s relationship with Milan began in 1932, when he arrived in Milan after graduating. He devoted himself to poetry and current affairs publications but above all he began the long association that brought him into the world of big industry and to the assorted group of intellectuals who had gathered around Edoardo Persico. In 1937 he was hired by the Pirelli Group’s Società del Linoleum. This was a brief but decisive step, for the following year he became the director of Olivetti’s technical advertising office in Milan. At Linoleum he met Giuseppe Luraghi, whom he encountered again at Pirelli after the war and together they created two of the most important Italian company magazines: Pirelli. Rivista di informazione e di tecnica (1948) and Civiltà delle Macchine (1953).
Friday 5 February 2021, from 5 p.m., live on the online channels of the Centrale dell’Acqua di Milano: “Sinisgalli and Civiltà delle Macchine”. With Gian Italo Bischi (University of Urbino) and Giorgio Bigatti (Bocconi University, Milan)
In 1950 Sinisgalli published Furor mathematicus, with writings on mathematics, geometry, architecture, arts and crafts, and on technology and the history of science. This was a prelude to Civiltà delle Macchine, the house organ of Finmeccanica which he created in 1953 and directed for five years (32 issues). The magazine was the expression of a multi-disciplinary culture that brought together science, literature and the arts within the framework of an industrial humanism that had a distant antecedent in Carlo Cattaneo’s Politecnico.
Friday 12 February 2021, from 5 p.m., live on the online channels of the Centrale dell’Acqua di Milano: “Sinisgalli the Poet”. With Clelia Martignoni (University of Pavia) and Luca Stefanelli (University of Pavia).
Sinisgalli’s “dual personality” as an engineer and poet began to emerge in his first publications in the 1930s and acquired its complete form in the 1950s. Sinisgalli maintained that poetry is a set of “real numbers” and “imaginary numbers”. There is always something that cannot be understood, something not immediately scientific, and there is always room for the imagination, but there is also much that is part of the real world. Writing poetry means reflecting on existence and on our ability to understand the scientific nature of reality by means of poetic passion. Which is always a controlled passion, and a highly objective filter.
You can follow the live feed here