Franco Grignani
Franco Grignani was an influential artist and graphic designer most famous for his ‘Woolmark’ logo, created in 1964. Grignani initially studied mathematics and architecture in the late 1920’s to early 1930’s but quickly discovered his own personal interests surrounding photography and visual phenomena, leading to him opening his own studio in Milan where he specialised in exhibition design and graphics. His style soon made him a strong influence in the graphic design world, through his experimental approach anticipating ideas from Op Art.
Op art, short for optical art, is a style of visual art that uses optical illusions. Op art worksare abstract, with many better known pieces created in black and white. Typically, they give the viewer the impression of movement, hidden images, flashing and vibrating patterns, or of swelling or warping.
Over the course of his multidisciplinary career, Grignani created more than fourteen-thousand works. They ranged from 16 book covers for a Penguin sci-fi mini-series to a new corporate identity for Arti Grafiche Alfieri & Lacroix in Milan, including 150 different poster designs.
This exhibition featured around 130 paintings and works on paper, including his graphic design projects many of which are on loan from private collections and from the Manuela Grignani Sirtoli
similar to famous experimental Italian painters, Grignani was briefly affiliated with the Futurist movement. He exhibited as part of the group from the mid-1920s, and in 1933 participated in the huge Great National Futurist Exhibition in Rome. After 1935 his work turned toward geometric abstraction, abandoning any lingering figurative elements.
As well as his commercial work he continued to create paintings which revealed a growing fascination with optical effects. Initially his ideas were not understood by the artistic world, leaving him to work mainly in isolation. His exploration of perceptual processes, largely inspired by Gestalt Psychology, was undertaken through both painting and photography. The works he made were characterised by their use of blurred forms, and warped and dynamic ‘virtual’ shapes that seem to emerge out of, and recede back into, the surfaces of his compositions.
Gestalt psychology is an attempt to understand the laws behind the ability to acquire and maintain meaningful perceptions in an apparently chaotic world.
Grignani’s most famous work was created in 1964, when the International Wool Secretariat (IWS) chose one of his studies as the winner of an international competition for a new logo. As a member of the jury, Grignani was unable to submit a design of his own, but had been so disappointed at the standard of the Italian entries that he submitted one under the fake name ‘Francesco Saroglia’.
Now acknowledged as one of the most recognisable, elegant and effective trademarks of all time, the design is based on a skein of wool, but its sinuous, twisted form — resembling a Möbius strip — also reflected Grignani’s interest in mathematics.
The Möbius strip is a surface with only one side and only one edge. It can be made using a strip of paper by gluing the two ends together with a half-twist.
