Ludovico Pratesi

On Saturday 18th July at 6.30 pm we will open at the Pescheria Visual Arts Center, Massimo's gaze, an exhibition dedicated to the figure of Massimo Dolcini (1945-2005), curated by Ludovico Pratesi, who intends to analyze the different aspects of Dolcini's personality, graph among the main innovators of Italian social and cultural communication, known as "public utility graphics", between the seventies and eighties.
The exhibition is promoted by the Municipality of Pesaro / Department of Beauty and Museum System, in collaboration with the Municipality of Urbania.

Graphic designer, communicator, designer but also painter, collector, ceramist, teacher, traveler, cook and cooking enthusiast: for the first time the complex and labyrinthine personality of Dolcini is presented at 360 degrees, highlighting unknown or little known aspects, through an exhibition divided into two parts within the spaces of the Pescheria, which alternates spectacular moments and visual impact with more intimate and reflective situations. More than three hundred works including paintings, watercolors, ceramics and posters document the private and more secret Dolcini. The exhibition begins in the Loggiato, where the exhibition is divided into three geometric modules (which incorporate the characteristic graphic signs of Dolcini) with a cross-shaped structure, which intend to recall the "x", the logo of the professional studies of the graph maintained during the time. Each module is dedicated to an aspect of Dolcini's personality, to reconstruct his gaze on the world and on his time. Fragments of public and private life, accompanied by a wall timeline that reconstructs the highlights of the life of Dolcini, with references to his work, his passions, the forms of his creativity in everyday life.

The space of life

The exhibition path opens with a painting related to the activity of a painter, practiced in his early youth and then abandoned. A surreal and fantastic image never exposed to the public, which already indicates the quality of his gaze, original and kaleidoscopic since adolescence. A passion that returns to adulthood through a series of watercolors on display. The first module, dedicated to 'author' photography, brings together a series of unpublished personal images related to the daily and professional life of Dolcini: portraits and self-portraits, landscapes and places, friends and students educated with a subjective and original eye. The second proposes photographic documents - equally unpublished - made for purposes related to its communication activity that nevertheless offer a participatory and sometimes amiably ironic gaze on the characters, the initiatives, the public life of the Pesaro community of the '70s.
Between the two modules, a circular element concerns the dimension of Dolcini, a collector of popular ceramics and ceramist himself: two aspects that testify to his interest in the object of craftsmanship and its possible contiguity with design, documented by a selection of ceramics from his private collection and a sampling of those made by him.


Work space
On the walls of the Suffragio church there is a selection of the graphic production of Massimo Dolcini: a corpus of murals - around 70 - that document his activity for the most diverse clients - institutions, institutions, businesses active in the city - from the Rossini Foundation to the Festival of New Cinema at Cucine Scavolini, in addition to the Municipality of Pesaro, for which he worked since the seventies. The Suffragio space will host meetings, round tables and public activities related to the figure of Massimo Dolcini, for the entire duration of the exhibition.

The exhibition newspaper
An exhibition magazine will contain texts and images that will deepen the figure and the work of Dolcini. The publication will be offered free of charge to visitors to the exhibition.

The collateral activities
There will be a program of collateral activities, both within the exhibition and in the city of Pesaro, for the entire duration of the event, dedicated to the different aspects of the personality of Massimo Dolcini.

Biographical notes

Massimo Dolcini was born in Pesaro on July 3, 1945. He began the profession of graphic designer in 1969, when he graduated from the Advanced Course of Graphic Art in Urbino, where he was a pupil of Albe Steiner and Michele Provinciali. Two masters who have been able to teach him the best of their experiences and their vision of the world. From 1969 to 1984 he taught alternate periods in the city of Urbino, Photography and Graphics at ISIA (1969-74) and Photography at the Academy of Fine Arts (1974-84). In 1971 he set up a consultancy relationship with the Municipality of Pesaro, which constituted, for that period, a unique case in the international field of image design for a local administration. Since the beginning, the work of Dolcini and of the Fuorischema studio has in fact been characterized by the specialization in "graphic of public utility" (the name is Albe Steiner), providing services to local authorities, political parties, social and cultural organizations. In 1981 Fuorischema, supported for a short period by M & M, began to acquire private companies as clients, with image consultancy of a complex nature. The operation of Dolcini and its collaborators has opened up to a wider professional field and new tools, borrowed from communication agencies, starting a path that led, in 1992, to the birth of Dolcini associati srl .. Dolcini and its structures have participated in numerous prestigious graphic exhibitions in Italy and around the world and their works in the field of public and corporate communication are present in museum collections, catalogs and specialized magazines, both national and international.

The exhibition is made with materials lent by individuals and the collaboration of CDPG Aiap - Center of Documentation on the Graphic Project, of AIAP-Italian Association design of visual communication and of the Academy of Fine Arts of Urbino.