And now a selection of exceptional works, on cardboard, often stamped on the back L'artistica, a historic art shop in Via del Babuino in Rome in the 1950s and 1960s. A very rare repertoire of plates representing a visual experiment and contamination that lasted a few years, from the late 1950s to 1965, almost exclusively designed for the French market, for magazines such as Star Cine Cosmos and Le film du coer. Selected and created by a brilliant artist and editor such as Franco Bozzesi, who then brought authors such as Ermanno Iaia and Franco Fiorenzi into his workshop. Collage, fine photographic film paper cut and shaped and then retouched with tempera and further shading, all on sturdy cardboard. Not exactly cineromanzo, but an innovative form in terms of depth, perspective and inventiveness, which takes the cinema of those years back almost to one great melò. Unique works from the cinerama of the 1940s, a step away from the photoromanzo, whose golden period (with the real balloon) probably begins with "Super Cinema" at the end of 1950 (first release of Il brigante Musolino) and reaches its apogee in the middle of the decade: "Fotoromanzo gigante", "I grandi films-I capolavori dello schermo", "Amica film", "I tuoi film-romanzo" are born and die.
Among the very rare series of Franco Bozzesi's art that we are presenting, the Giant Cineromanzo, published by Lanterna Magica, which is actually an emanation of the De Laurentiis productions, as well as the Apollon productions, are certainly among the highest quality cineromancials, which also made extensive use of stills, had an author who signed the texts (Mara Baldeva), a large format, excellent paper and were sometimes released at the same time as the films (even earlier for Soldati's La donna del fiume), in synergy with the in-house productions.
But Franco Bozzesi goes further, he does not use the balloon in these plates, but experiments with vignettes with shadow effects and crossings of collages and perspectives.
Unique works by an artist-publisher who, for a few glorious years in France, decided to break new ground, even crossing over into Jean Luc Godard's New Wave.