EUGENIO CARMI. THE TIME BETWEEN PARENTHESES

25m │Documentary │2020

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In 1956, Gian Lupo Osti, the then general secretary of Cornigliano (the jewel in the crown of the post-war Italian iron and steel industry), later Italsider, called in Eugenio Carmi - an Italian painter and exponent of abstractionism - to act as an art consultant. Initially, Carmi edited the information magazine for the company's employees, entrusting the covers to the most interesting contemporary artists. In 1965, the artist translated the right to beauty and the need for stimulating thought in the factory into a series of eight accident-prevention signs to be installed in workspaces that are still considered a turning point in the history of applied graphics in Italy. Umberto Eco, a friend of Eugenio Carmi and with whom he illustrated three children's fairy tales: The Three Cosmonauts, The Bomb and the General, and The Gnomes of Gnu, dedicated a treatise on semiotics to these signs.