Licalbe Steiner: Partisan Graphic Designers

Museo del Novecento presents the exhibition “Licalbe Steiner, Partisan Graphic Designers” (Licalbe Steiner, Grafici Partigiani, in Italian) a suggestive path between materials, testimonies, graphics, photographs and video about Albe and Lica Steiner, each with a story and an identity of its own, but united from 1938 in private and in the work.

The materials on display, gathered from 1939 to 1945 and during the protagonists’ trip to Mexico in 1946-1948, as well as the pictures and videos on the two artists’ lives join the works by writers Elio Vittorini and Italo Calvino to give a highlight on the cultural rebirth after the end of the Second World War. All the artists displaying their works have different histories, but are all connected by the activity as partisans and by an optimistic attitude and a never-ending faith in future, which helped the rebith of art in the after-war period.

The exhibition, curated by Anna Steiner, falls in the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Italy as statement of the civil commitment during the resistance that has marked the course of their lives. The work of Steiners was always characterized by a poetics of optimism, by a confidence declared in the present and in the future, by believing that the commitment in first person, professional, educational could mark the difference.