Electa

The new look of Electaphoto monographs

The restyling of the Electaphoto monograph series, designed to reconstruct a ‘cultural’ history of 20th- and 21st-century photography, is available from 3 December

The Electa publishing house is proposing a new project for the Electaphoto monograph series dedicated to leading contemporary photographers. Alongside the most famous names, there is also a series of little-known photographers, brought to light by careful studies with the aim of telling a ‘cultural’ story about photography in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The books, designed to be read and looked at, interweave text and images in a dialogue between languages, offering a new perspective on the photographers’ works and lives.

Mario Dondero (1928-2015)

Archaeologist, art historian and series editor Nunzio Giustozzi, together with Laura Strappa, curator and expert in photography and visual culture, will be the editors of the volume dedicated to internationally renowned Italian photojournalist Mario Dondero.

His monograph, divided into four sections, is distinguished by contributions from the most authoritative voices in journalism and culture, accompanied by a careful and extensive selection of photographs chosen by Dondero himself. This volume is the first comprehensive catalogue of his extraordinary work, organised chronologically and geographically to offer a visual narrative of the political, cultural and social events that shaped the ‘long’ century, chronicled through his lens.

Martha Rocher (1920-1990)

For the first time, Elisa Genovesi, an Italian researcher, and Raffaella Perna, a contemporary art historian and lecturer at the Sapienza University of Rome, will present the work of photographer and artist Martha Rocher, who interpreted the artistic and cultural panorama of 1950s Paris and 1960s Milan.

The selection of more than 250 black-and-white photographs, chosen from more than 1,600 prints kept in her private archive, depict the work and ateliers of the major exponents of the Avant-garde movements, including Yves Klein, Sonia Terk Dalaunay, Meret Oppenheim, and many others, offering an overview of the artistic climate of those years.

Giovanni Chiaramonte (1948-2023)

This series will also include the first major monograph on Giovanni Chiaramonte, the Italian photographer known for his philosophical approach, by internationally renowned Italian art historian Arturo Carlo Quintavalle in collaboration with the artist’s archives.

More than 400 selected photographs, some of his texts and an essay by Paolo Barbaro on Chiaramonte’s photographic focus on architecture have been organically arranged to make this volume complete and unique, testifying to one of the finest and most extraordinary perspectives in contemporary photography.

“Impression, Morisot”: the charm of Impressionism in Genoa

At Palazzo Ducale from October 12, 2024 to February 23, 2025 the first major exhibition dedicated to Berthe Morisot, one of the leading figures of Impressionism.

The exhibition “Impression, Morisot” is the first major exhibition in Italy dedicated to Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) held at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa from 12 October 2024 to 23 February 2025.

Press Preview Thursday 10 October 2024 at 11.30 am. The exhibition is part of the calendar of official celebrations to mark the 150 th anniversary of Impressionism, included in the commemorative season initiated by the Museo d’Orsay in Paris, organised in collaboration with the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice and with unpublished works from the heirs of Berthe Morisot.

The exhibition is a project by the Palazzo Ducale Fondazione per la Cultura and Electa, who is also a publisher of the catalogue, supported by the Liguria Region and Genoa City Council, with the patronage of the French Embassy, and is curated by Marianne Mathieu, one of the most renowned experts on Berthe Morisot’s work and a scholar of the history of Impressionism, and protagonist of many scientific discoveries in this field.

More than 80 works, including paintings, etchings, watercolours and pastels, plus photographic and archive documents, many of which have never been seen before, provide an insight into the life of the artist, who managed to reconcile family life and an artistic career, and entertained fruitful relations not only with the greatest artists of the time such as Renoir, Monet, Manet and Degas, but also with intellectual figures such as Mallarmé and Zola. The exhibition features scientific innovations related to her stays on the Riviera between 1881-1882 and 1888-1889 and the influence of the Mediterranean light on her work.

‘BAJ. Baj chez Baj’: the universe of Enrico Baj on show in Milan

From 8 October 2024 to 9 February 2025, Palazzo Reale pays homage to Enrico Baj, one of the protagonists of the Italian and international neo-avant-garde, with a personal exhibition.

Milan celebrates Enrico Baj (Milan, 31 October 1924 – Vergiate, 16 June 2003), one of the masters of the Italian and international neo-avant-garde, with a large retrospective as one of the protagonists of the autumn exhibitions, designed to revisit all the themes and subjects of his long and multifaceted career. Baj returns to Palazzo Reale in the Sala delle Cariatidi, exactly one hundred years after his birth and twelve years after the exhibition I Funerali dell’anarchico Pinelli, in the same room, and which, for the first time, will be integrated into an anthological itinerary and in close dialogue with other works by the master.

Promoted by the Comune di Milano-Cultura and produced by Palazzo Reale with Electa, the project is curated by Chiara Gatti and Roberta Cerini Baj and features almost fifty works spanning a time period from the early 1950s to the dawn of the 2000s, covering the artist’s phases of research and involvement with different movements over time: from the recovery of the Dada movement and Surrealism to the modes of Informal art, from the proximity to the Nordic CoBrA group to the genesis of the Nuclear art movement, which Baj founded in Milan with Sergio Dangelo in 1951. Starting from the gestural abstraction of his beginnings, passing through the birth of his larval anthropomorphic figures and the eruption of the liquefied mountains in the magmatic body of the Generals, the exhibition will touch on the parody of extraterrestrial invasions to arrive at the Meccano army and the animated world of chests of drawers and trumeaus.

His characters, which have entered popular imagination, Dames and Generals, Ultrabodies, Mirrors, Furniture and the monsters of the Apocalypse will animate a carousel of creatures from the surrealist and sci-fi universe of an artist who used irony and the grotesque as a tool to dismantle bourgeois conformism and take a stand against all forms of established power.

His famous aesthetics of trinkets and trimmings, of tassels and shiny buttons like insignia on the truncated chests of his emblazoned soldiers, will be the thread that will stitch together, in sections, the enormous themes of Baj’s poetics, freed from a rigid chronological sequence or genre, with continuous cross-references between art and literature, colours and words, following a sort of script that will suggest a theatrical time and space to the spectator, given even the setting.

The two Electa bookshops in the Colosseum make the 2024 List of the World’s Most Beautiful Emporiums

It was announced today that the Prix Versailles selection committee has included the two Electa bookshops in the Colosseum on its 2024 List of the World’s Most Beautiful Emporiums.

The Prix Versailles, a world prize for architecture and design, awards contemporary achievements that make an exceptional mark on everyday life. The selection criteria include innovation, creativity, the local heritage and eco-sustainability.

Following this initial selection, the Electa bookshops in the Colosseum will compete for one of three 2024 World Titles (Prix Versailles, Mention Intérieur, Mention Extérieur), which will be announced on 2 December at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

The refurbishment of the Colosseum bookshop in May 2022 is part of an overall plan to modernise the network of four bookshops run by Electa in the Colosseum Archaeological Park. The project covered both the furnishings and graphics as well as the product selection: publishing and merchandising with dual copyrights — Electa and the Colosseum Archaeological Park — to provide the public with tools for orientation and understanding, as well as souvenirs marked by graphical care, quality materials and eco-sustainability of the raw materials and production chain.

The design of the bookshops in the Colosseum Archaeological Park was entrusted to Studio Migliore+Servetto, who developed a new format with Electa.

The different areas of intervention are united by a lightweight design for the furnishings, a selection of very light tones and the transparency of specifically designed micro-perforated sheets. These unifying elements are varied in each bookshop with specific colours (red, yellow) and differing graphics designed by Leonardo Sonnoli Irene Bacchi Studio Sonnoli.

Bookcases are used as an effective display system: they are flexible, capable of accommodating the different room sizes and their specific commercial requirements, and they highlight the richness of the contents and different types of merchandise.

The spaces are conceived as a contemporary Wunderkammer. A repeating module is the ‘frame’, which symbolically works around the merchandise on display. Visitors are surrounded by designer objects, articles bearing the Park brand name, books and products that, through the rhythm of the display and the graphic apparatus denoting the spaces, compose a narrative that arouses curiosity and a desire to learn about the monument and its history.

Immerse yourself in a summer full of stories with our featured books

Here are 50 summer books for you to enjoy and help you to grow, learn and travel, using your imagination

Reading is a journey that leads us to discover new worlds, different cultures and, most importantly, ourselves. What better time to indulge in this practice than during the summer?

Why is summer reading so special?

With its long days and more relaxed pace, summer offers the ideal time and attitude for reading. Without the hustle and bustle of everyday life, we can finally indulge in the pleasure of leafing through a book, letting ourselves be captivated by the stories and losing ourselves in the words. Reading during the summer helps us expand our horizons, stimulating our imagination, keeping our minds exercised and reducing stress.

Here are our recommendations for holiday reading

Whatever your destination, we thought we’d offer you a collection of books selected from the most read and appreciated titles of our publishing houses (Battello a vapore, De Agostini, Einaudi, Electa, Mondadori, Mondadori Electa, Mondadori Children’s Books, Piemme, Rizzoli and Sperling & Kupfer, Star Comics and Utet), designed to satisfy readers of all ages.

Alice Cairati, the new communications and promotion manager of the Piemme, Sperling & Kupfer and Mondadori Electa publishing houses

Today, Alice Cairati takes up the position of Communications and Promotion Manager of the Piemme, Sperling & Kupfer and Electa publishing houses, reporting directly to General Manager Stefano Peccatori.

Born in Milan in 1984, she graduated from the University of Milan with honours in Philosophical Sciences. Cairati began her professional career with the Mondadori Group 13 years ago, at the Mondadori Electa publishing house. After three years of experience in marketing, she shifted to communications and events in 2014, before becoming Communications Manager for the Varia line of Mondadori Electa, Sperling & Kupfer, Piemme in 2019.

The new communications structure entrusted to Alice Cairati was designed to develop integrated communication plans, in which the press office, digital communications and promotion are coordinated strategically and effectively. In this respect, Cetta Leonardi is head of the Radio and TV Press and Promotion Office, Alessandro Ventura is head of the Digital Communications and Promotion Office, while Cairati remains responsible for the Events Office.

Milan Celebrates Enrico Baj on the 100th anniversary of his birth

At Palazzo Reale from 8 October 2024 to 9 February 2025, an exhibition dedicated to the international artist, curated by Chiara Gatti and Roberta Cerini Baj

Milan is celebrating Enrico Baj (Milan, 31 October 1924 – Vergiate, 16 June 2003), a master of the Italian and international neo-avant-garde, with an extensive retrospective that will stand out among exhibitions this autumn, as it is designed to cover all the topics and subjects of his long and multifaceted experience.

Baj returns to Sala delle Cariatidi in Palazzo Reale exactly a hundred years after his birth and twelve years after the exhibition I Funerali dell’anarchico Pinelli (The Funerals of the Anarchist Pinelli) was held in the same room. For the first time, this exhibition will be integrated in an anthological itinerary and a timely dialogue with other works by the master.

Promoted by the Municipality of Milan – Culture and produced by Palazzo Reale with Electa, the project is curated by Chiara Gatti and Roberta Cerini Baj and includes nearly fifty works distilled in a time span ranging from the early 1950s to the dawn of 2000. It crosses the artist’s research phases and his adherence to different movements over time: from the revival of Dadaism and Surrealism to the modes of Informal art, from his closeness to the Nordic CoBrA to the genesis of the Nuclear art movement, which Baj founded in Milan with Sergio Dangelo in 1951. Starting from the gestural abstraction of his beginnings, passing through the birth of his larval anthropomorphic figures and the eruption of the liquefied mountains in the magmatic body of the Generals, the exhibition touches on the parody of extraterrestrial invasions, reaching the Meccano army and the animated world of chests of drawers and trumeaux.

His characters that have become part of the common imagination — the Ladies and Generals, the Ultrabodies, the Mirrors, the Furniture and the Monsters of the Apocalypse — will animate a flurry of creatures from the surrealist and sci-fi universe of an artist who made irony and the grotesque a picklock for dismantling bourgeois conformism and taking sides against all forms of consolidated power.

His celebrated aesthetics of trinkets and trimmings, tassels and shiny buttons like insignia on the truncated chests of his emblazoned soldiers, is a thread that stitches together sections of the broadest themes of Baj’s poetics, freed from a rigid chronological sequence or genre classification, with continuous cross-references between art and literature, colours and words, following a sort of script that, also in the setting, suggests a theatrical time and space for observers.

From 16 July to 13 September 2024, in anticipation of the major retrospective at Palazzo Reale, the Museum of Natural History on Corso Venezia will also host a tribute dedicated to by the artist’s engravings and books, in which Enrico Baj classified the natural world with irony and imagination. Under the title Enrico Baj. Zoologia fantastica e altre nature (Fantastic Zoology and Other Natures) will feature 22 panels divided among the Manuale di zoologia fantastica (Manual of Fantastic Zoology), Paradiso perduto (Paradise Lost), the folder I Fiori (The Flowers, with its visionary botany), as well as etchings from the famous De Rerum Natura of 1958, a homage (reinvented) to Lucretius’ Latin poem.

BAJ. BajchezBaj is also in Savona and Albissola Marina.
The unique catalogue published by Electa

To mark the centenary of the Milanese artist’s birth, an exhibition curated by Luca Bochicchio and dedicated to Baj’s ceramic work in all its historical and chronological development opens on 8 October. Entitled BAJ. Baj chez Baj will open at the Ceramics Museum in Savona, with a section also at MuDA – Museo Diffuso Albisola in Albissola Marina, in the exhibition centre and Casa Museo Jorn. The scientific collaboration between Milan and Savona, among curators and institutions, aims to outline two independent yet complementary itineraries paying homage to Baj’s eclectic genius. This is documented in the single catalogue published by Electa, in which the two exhibition itineraries unravel between places, forms, materials and encounters, tracing Baj’s fascinating cosmogony, an epiphany of intelligence and creativity.

Baj will also become a topic in Electa’s A-Z series, an array of monographic titles on eclectic 20th-century figures.

Electa at the Venice Biennale

Electa will be present at the 60th International Art Exhibition with dedicated publishing offers and updated layouts for its bookshops at the Venice Biennale.

At the bookshop: selected spaces, objects and books

The bookshop at the Arsenale Corderie (project by Migliore + Servetto Architects, 2022), also coordinated with the bookshop at the Giardini della Biennale, will have a new identity thanks to the graphic project by the Sonnoli studio to enhance the Biennale’s historical posters, drawn from the Biennale Library – ASAC.
In the same spaces, Electa will be presenting six official merchandising lines, including institutional ones curated by Studio De Valence and Marco Camuffo, plus the line of novelties designed for this edition by the Brazilian studio Campo.

Maintaining a focus on reading, Electa has also worked on an ‘author’s’ selection of titles. In fact, part of the titles at the bookshops were entrusted to an external ‘search’, presenting an unprecedented slant on the many themes of contemporary culture suggested by the exhibition. Anna Toscano, a writer, photographer and journalist who teaches Italian at Ca’ Foscari and other universities, seized the challenge to cross the threads connected with Adriano Pedrosa’s Biennale Arte 2024, developing a selection of around 300 titles in Italian and English, ranging from novels to essays to poetry.
Philosophical books, anthropological essays, comic books, photobooks, anthologies and short stories were identified and listed under four keywords, four suggestions that run through their contents and trace their trajectory.

Geography, with themes related in different ways and forms to migration, decolonisation, travelling and movement, and thus to people, bodies, language and anthropology;
Language, with titles that explore language in the broadest sense of the term;
People incorporates the concept of individuals and collectivity and traces a path through identity, gender, bodies, activism, migration, ideas, feminism, anthropology, philosophy and decolonisation;
Venice is a tribute that includes texts for leaving the stereotypical image of the Lagoon and entering an awareness of what the city of the Biennale has been, what it is and what it can become.

The four themes, however, intentionally represent a non-categorical selection, in which the boundary between topics can be ‘disputed’ and a book can find a place in the ‘word’ next to it. As with genres, this bibliography is in fact designed to elide or shift the boundary between literary genres: poetry sometimes tends to prose and prose to non-fiction, which can also cross over into poetry or philosophy. There are no limits to this division. Indeed it is a sharing of words without borders, because “when we all recognise ourselves as foreigners”, as Julia Kristeva writes, borders no longer have any reason to exist.

The range of books is completed with the catalogues of the Pavilions and Country Participations, illustrated volumes on the artists present in the International Exhibition, new publications on art/photography/fashion/graphic design, art commentary and focuses on refugee artists and writers.

The Electa catalogues for the Art Biennale 2024

For the 60th Venice Biennale, Electa is publishing Due qui/To Hear, the guide to the Italian Pavilion, edited by Luca Cerizza and designed by Studio Folder, presenting the project by Massimo Bartolini in collaboration with Caterina Barbieri, Gavin Bryars and Kali Malone.

Among other Electa publications for the 60th International Art Exhibition, we would like to mention the catalogue of the Saudi Arabian National Pavilion, curated by Maya El Khalil and Jessica Cerasi, where Manal Aldowayanis exhibiting the work Shifting Sands: A Battle Song, and the book H2O Venezia: Diari d’Acqua – Water Diaries, curated by Mara Hofmann, the catalogue of a collective exhibition resulting from a residency programme for women artists who worked on a visual narrative about Venice.

Parallel to the 60th Venice Biennale, the exhibition Uzbekistan: Avant-Garde in the Desert. The Form and the Symbol, curated by Silvia Burini and Giuseppe Barbieri and promoted and supported by the Foundation for the Development of Art and Culture of Uzbekistan, is opening at Ca’ Foscari University. This exhibition introduces the Italian and international public to a little-known page of artistic history in the first half of the 20th century. It presents over 100 works from the Tashkent Museum and the Nukus Museum, long described as the ‘Louvre of the Desert’, highlighting the connection between the Russian Avant-Garde and Central Asian art. Electa Catologue (Italian and English editions).

Also available at Electa bookshops is the Guide to the Pavilions of the Venice Biennale since 1877, in Italian and English editions, edited by Marco Mulazzani.

In Milan, the Gabriele Basilico exhibition takes place between the Palazzo Reale and the Triennale

Until 7 January 2024, the great exhibition dedicated to the famous cityscape photographer is open to the public

Milan, the city where Gabriele Basilico (August 1944 – February 2013) was born and lived, celebrates the 10th anniversary of the photographer’s death with “Gabriele Basilico. My Cities”, an extensive exhibition divided across two venues: Palazzo Reale and Triennale Milano. The exhibition is open to the public from 13 October 2023 until 7 January 2024 and is the first major tribute that the city of Milan is dedicating to Gabriele Basilico, his work and his cosmopolitan point of view, which let him capture the soul of every city.

The exhibition consists of more than 500 works, starting in Milan, at the Triennale, before arriving at the World, at the Palazzo Reale.

“Gabriele Basilico. My Cities” is promoted by the Comune di Milano-Cultura, Palazzo Reale and Triennale Milano, together with our publishing house Electa. The exhibition was made possible with the research partnership of the Gabriele Basilico Archive.

At the Palazzo Reale, the exhibition has been organised by Giovanna Calvenzi and Filippo Maggia and features a selection of Basilico’s works realised for major international clients. At the Triennale, a large selection of images of Milan and its suburbs, curated by Giovanna Calvenzi and Matteo Balduzzi, is on display.

The exhibition at the Palazzo Reale

Around 200 works selected from the Basilico Archive, which contains the artist’s most important works from international events throughout his career, are on display at the Palazzo Reale.

In the Lucernario, “Sezioni del paesaggio italiano (Sections of the Italian Landscape)” is exposed. It is a seminal study on the transformation of the national landscape created for Venice’s 6th Biennale Architettura in 1996, in collaboration with Stefano Boeri (96 prints, 30×40 cm). The study involves six sections of the country, from North to South Italy, corresponding to about 50 km each, linking a well-established urban area to a densely populated suburban area.

On display in the Sala delle Cariatidi are 100 photographs of more than 40 cities taken for prestigious international commissions, including Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, Moscow, London, Paris, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Boston, Liverpool, Rome, Berlin, Lisbon, Valencia, Jerusalem, Beirut, Amman, Monte Carlo, Hong Kong and others.

Electa is presenting two exhibitions dedicated to Italo Calvino in Rome and Genoa

Respectively at the Scuderie del Quirinale and Palazzo Ducale, the two exhibition projects were created to celebrate the centenary of the writer’s birth

As part of the celebrations for the centenary of Italo Calvino’s birth, our publishing house Electa is presenting two exhibitions dedicated to the great writer, one in Rome and one in Genoa.

The Roman exhibition entitled “Favoloso Calvino. Il mondo come opera d’arte. Carpaccio, de Chirico, Gnoli, Melotti e gli altri” will open Oct. 13 at the Scuderie del Quirinale and will remain open to the public until Feb. 4, 2024. The exhibition, curated by Mario Barenghi in collaboration with Electa, thoroughly explores Calvino’s connection with the arts through more than 400 works including paintings, sculptures, drawings and first editions of the writer’s books. The exhibition, which began as a “visual” project, will enable not only Calvino lovers, but also new readers, to learn more about the life and literary production of one of the leading figures of twentieth-century literature.

Parallel to the exhibition in Rome, from October 15 2023, to April 7 2024, the exhibition project “Calvino cantafavole” curated by Eloisa Morra and Luca Scarlini opens at Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, in the spaces of the Loggia degli Abati. The Genoese exhibition organized by Electa, in collaboration with the Scuderie del Quirinale, Teatro della Tosse and Lele Luzzati Foundation, is divided into six sections to give visitors a chance to explore Calvino’s relationship with the world of fairy tales in greater depth.

The exhibitions, part of the program for the centennial celebration of Calvin’s birth, will be accompanied by the publication of related catalogues:

In addition to the catalogues, Electa has also planned other publishing activities dedicated to Italo Calvino: a new edition of Idem by Giulio Paolini, a valuable and now unobtainable work; the volume Calvino A-Z, edited by Marco Belpoliti, for the Enciclopedie series; Il dubbio e il desiderio, a new title in the Oilà series edited by Silvia Bencivelli and dedicated to Eva Mameli Calvino, the writer’s mother.