The 1950s,
Different Visions
for a Unique Style
In 1957, Arrigo Castellani, the director of Pirelli’s “Ufficio Propaganda”, invited the six top designers of the time to his home by the Ticino River. Ezio Bonini, Antonio Boggeri, Franco Grignani, Erberto Carboni, Bob Noorda, and Pino Tovaglia thus came together to create a multi-artist advertising campaign. The theme was the same for all of them: roads and journeys, by car and in safety. With 33 subjects and a total of more than 500 advertisements, the 1957 advertising campaign for Pirelli Stelvio, Rolle and Cinturato tyres captures the spirit of an age – that of the Fabulous Fifties, in which any and every road can be taken. La strada è bella – “The road is beautiful”, is the message in Grignani’s collages, which invite people to take to the roads and motorways of Italy and travel far and wide. To visit villages and cities of artistic importance, Carboni adds, with his views of the monuments and squares that are the treasures of Italy. Travelling through clean, ethereal geometries, as Noorda puts it in his drawings of road junctions, bridges, and highways, in the name of modernity.
If you want to travel, you need a car, so Boggeri uses roundabouts, hairpin bends and crossroads in his drawings to convey the message promoting Cinturato, Rolle, and Stelvio tyres for Fiat, Alfa and Lancia models. Bonini makes reference to physics and experimentation to ensure a safe journey. In 1953, Bonini, who was something of a veteran in the field of communication, had himself already created the historic campaign called “How many calculations nature makes” starting from the ideas of the engineer-poet Leonardo Sinisgalli. Molecules, geometric sequences, and genetic sediments form a snail shell or the shell of a crustacean, or even a Pirelli Stelvio tyre.
The individual personalities behind these very different visions and creative forms all expressed the unique and unmistakable style of the Long P.
In 1957, Arrigo Castellani, the director of Pirelli’s “Ufficio Propaganda”, invited the six top designers of the time to his home by the Ticino River. Ezio Bonini, Antonio Boggeri, Franco Grignani, Erberto Carboni, Bob Noorda, and Pino Tovaglia thus came together to create a multi-artist advertising campaign. The theme was the same for all of them: roads and journeys, by car and in safety. With 33 subjects and a total of more than 500 advertisements, the 1957 advertising campaign for Pirelli Stelvio, Rolle and Cinturato tyres captures the spirit of an age – that of the Fabulous Fifties, in which any and every road can be taken. La strada è bella – “The road is beautiful”, is the message in Grignani’s collages, which invite people to take to the roads and motorways of Italy and travel far and wide. To visit villages and cities of artistic importance, Carboni adds, with his views of the monuments and squares that are the treasures of Italy. Travelling through clean, ethereal geometries, as Noorda puts it in his drawings of road junctions, bridges, and highways, in the name of modernity.
If you want to travel, you need a car, so Boggeri uses roundabouts, hairpin bends and crossroads in his drawings to convey the message promoting Cinturato, Rolle, and Stelvio tyres for Fiat, Alfa and Lancia models. Bonini makes reference to physics and experimentation to ensure a safe journey. In 1953, Bonini, who was something of a veteran in the field of communication, had himself already created the historic campaign called “How many calculations nature makes” starting from the ideas of the engineer-poet Leonardo Sinisgalli. Molecules, geometric sequences, and genetic sediments form a snail shell or the shell of a crustacean, or even a Pirelli Stelvio tyre.
The individual personalities behind these very different visions and creative forms all expressed the unique and unmistakable style of the Long P.
