1924, PERUGINA CUP
A race car hurtling along at a blistering speed that seems to devour the road. The grey blurred images of the passenger and driver, seen from above, merge into an iconic kaleidoscope of green, white and red. No other image could express more effectively the Roaring Twenties and their contradictions. Italy was still a mainly agricultural country, coping with the aftermath of a devastating war which had, however, contributed to stimulating national pride and to constructing a strong national identity. In the same period, in the large and small cities of the North, a new generation of entrepreneurs was stepping up the initiatives that were to trigger the rapid, intensive growth of the country.
The Post-War period was a time of great ferment and growth also for the Perugina confectionary company, founded by the Buitoni family in 1907 as a small workshop in Perugia, the capital city of Umbria, which decided to sponsor the first speed race of the Region. An extremely fortunate combination as the production of motor cars in Italy, although still very limited in number, was passing through a phase of intense growth, and numerous marques (Alfa Romeo, Isotta Fraschini, Itala, Maserati amongst others) were starting to score victories in all the most important competitions.
The poster to mark the first edition of the event, held in 1924, was commissioned from the artist Federico Seneca, born in Marche, who had his own studio in Milan and had already designed numerous illustrations for Perugina and Buitoni. The Cup was won by the Tuscan Emilio Materassi (who died tragically four years later during the Italian Gran Prix at Monza) at the wheel of an Itala car that had been fitted with a Hispano-Suiza aircraft engine to boost its power. Inspired by the most avant-garde artistic movements of the period (from cubism to futurism), Seneca designed a poster of great visual and emotional impact, completely focused on the dynamism of the vehicle which gives the impression of trying to escape from the static space of the illustration to race towards an unknown but perfectly tangible finishing line. The speed of the car thus becomes the metaphor of a country increasingly projected towards unceasing, albeit not entire painless, progress and growth, as demonstrated in the space of just a few years by the advent of another dramatic conflict, that was to transform it into one of the leading countries of the Western world in just a few decades.
BY Alberto Ponti
The Post-War period was a time of great ferment and growth also for the Perugina confectionary company, founded by the Buitoni family in 1907 as a small workshop in Perugia, the capital city of Umbria, which decided to sponsor the first speed race of the Region. An extremely fortunate combination as the production of motor cars in Italy, although still very limited in number, was passing through a phase of intense growth, and numerous marques (Alfa Romeo, Isotta Fraschini, Itala, Maserati amongst others) were starting to score victories in all the most important competitions.
The poster to mark the first edition of the event, held in 1924, was commissioned from the artist Federico Seneca, born in Marche, who had his own studio in Milan and had already designed numerous illustrations for Perugina and Buitoni. The Cup was won by the Tuscan Emilio Materassi (who died tragically four years later during the Italian Gran Prix at Monza) at the wheel of an Itala car that had been fitted with a Hispano-Suiza aircraft engine to boost its power. Inspired by the most avant-garde artistic movements of the period (from cubism to futurism), Seneca designed a poster of great visual and emotional impact, completely focused on the dynamism of the vehicle which gives the impression of trying to escape from the static space of the illustration to race towards an unknown but perfectly tangible finishing line. The speed of the car thus becomes the metaphor of a country increasingly projected towards unceasing, albeit not entire painless, progress and growth, as demonstrated in the space of just a few years by the advent of another dramatic conflict, that was to transform it into one of the leading countries of the Western world in just a few decades.
BY Alberto Ponti