Franco Maria Ricci

Franco Maria Ricci (born December 2, 1937 in Parma ) is an Italian designer and publisher specializing in art and design books.

Vita

Ricci comes from an aristocratic family with Genoese origins, studied geology and worked as a petroleum geologist for Gulf Oil before opening a graphic design studio in Parma in 1963, where he designed, for example, posters, catalogs, calendars and trademarks. In 1965 he founded his publishing house Franco Maria Ricci (based in Milan ), which became particularly well known for its art magazine FMR , which appeared in 1982 . The magazine contains articles by well-known art historians and writers and attaches great importance to the high quality of the illustrations and photographs. It appears every two months in Italian, German (from 1986), English, French and Spanish, is originally only available by subscription and is based in Milan. He also owns his own bookstores, mainly in Italy.

In 2003 he retired from the publishing business and since 2005 has been working on the design of an extensive maze, a labyrinth as part of his planned museum.

In 2002 his publishing house merged with the Arté Group, founded in Florence in 1992, and has been in Bologna since 2004 . His art collection, including a large collection of books on the Parma-born typographer Giambattista Bodoni , like Ricci , was exhibited in 2004 in the palace (Reggio) of Colorno near Parma.

In the summer of 2015 Ricci opened an extensive museum area, La Masone , in Fontanellato near Parma - "The central element is the world's largest labyrinth, according to Ricci, of which he has dreamed of since childhood".

Awards - honors

• 1981 Chevalier des arts et lettres
• 2010 Kythera Prize

Publications

• In 1988 the Klingspor Museum in Offenbach am Main published Ricci's exhibition catalog Bodoni in Offenbach , which contained 12 panels from the series majuscules and chancellery writings.

Sample publications from his publisher:

• From 1972 to 1980 he published a facsimile edition of the encyclopedia by Denis Diderot and Alembert in 18 volumes.
• In 1965 he published a reprint of Manuale Tipografico (1818) by Giambattista Bodoni in 900 limited copies. Ricci worked for two years on the reproduction and the associated research (the 100 copies printed in Bodoni's time could hardly be found). Although Ricci put the price of the reprint at $ 500 at the time, the 400 copies of the first edition were quickly sold out. A reprint of Bodoni's typographical catalog L'Oratio Dominica (1808, Our Father in 155 languages) followed shortly thereafter . Ricci, who places great emphasis on typographical details in his books, is considered a specialist in Bodoni’s work.
• From 1984 he published the Italian magazine Kos , which is presented in a similar way to FMR (only on a white instead of black background), but deals with the history of medicine, the natural sciences and the humanities. He also published a cultural history magazine for the Italian President Il Quirinal and from 1988 a cultural history magazine The Great Tour (Grand Tour, in Italian).
• The Luxe, calm et volupté series is dedicated to fashion designers (such as Versace , Armani , Valentino ).
• Ricci was friends with Jorge Luis Borges and from 1974 published his library of Babel in 30 volumes (also published in Germany, in France from 1977 with Edition Retz and a new edition with Panama).
• He has published books on artists who were little appreciated at the time of their first publication by Ricci, for example by Tamara de Lempicka , the girls' photographs by Lewis Carroll (1975), and books on little-known museum collections in the manner of the presentation of chambers of curiosities in the Baroque period (Quadreria series) .
• In 1981 he published the Codex Seraphinianus by the Italian architect Luigi Serafini , a lavishly illustrated book about an imaginary world, written in cipher. More affordable editions were later published, for example in Germany by Prestel 1983, an abridged French and Spanish edition by Ricci Verlag in 1993 (with a foreword by Italo Calvino ) and an Italian by Rizzoli in 2006.
• In 1975 he published an erotic comic book Histoire d'O by the illustrator Guido Crepax .
• The series The Signs of Man , which is dedicated to the work of an artist with a text by a writer. Examples: Aloys Zötl (Bestiarium) with text by Julio Cortázar , Arcimboldo with a text by Roland Barthes , Alberto Savinio with texts by Leonardo Sciascia and Giuliano Briganti .

Web links

• Portrait in design boom (Engl.)
• Interview in L´Express February 23, 2006, Borges, Babel et moi (French)
• Interview with Design Boom 2001 (Engl.)
• Andrea Affaticati: Interview in Spiegel 2010

References

1. ↑ FMR stands for its initial letters, but also indicates ephemeral things in the French reading éphémère
2. ↑ According to an interview with Ricci in 2006, this should be the largest labyrinth in the world with a path length of 3 km on 50,000 square meters. 120 types of bamboo are used, which result in about 5 m high labyrinth walls. According to Ricci, the idea for the labyrinth came from Jorge Luis Borges
3. ↑ English website about his collection ( Memento of the original from May 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Italian website for his collection ( Memento of the original from May 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ Peter Prantner: The maze of a possessed person. Inspiration also from the Vienna KHM. In: orf.at. May 17, 2015, accessed July 7, 2015 . 
5. ↑ Only those who lose themselves can find themselves in FAZ of April 25, 2016, page 15
6. ↑ According to my own statements in a 2006 interview, a misprint in the catalog, the price should actually be 50 dollars