Museo Cantonale d’Arte of Lugano

Since 1987 and for seventeen years Bruno Monguzzi curated the communication of the “Museo Cantonale d’Arte of Lugano”. The famous billboard triptych system used for the communication of the museum, created by him, provides for a wide use of Bodonian typefaces.The same brand of the museum makes use of it, being built from the opposition of a neoclassical A and a rationalist M, which represent the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

In reference to the manifesto for “Itinerari sublimi: viaggi d’artisti tra il 1750 ed il 1850” Monguzzi says: «[…] I used the surface as a territory by placing the five syllables “I-ti-ne-ra-ri” along an imaginary journey. Visual transcription of the title: the gaze travels. The “ne”, placed at the head of the poster, was torn to reveal a second “ne” composed in Fraktur in opposition to the three Bodonian that I used below. This presents a second reading that alludes to the passage between cultures, German in the north, Latin in the south. The tear as a metaphor for the barrier created by the Alps.»