Lele Luzzati and the Galleria del Deposito: A Fruitful Anomaly

Sandro Ricaldone

When, on 3 September 1963, the Cooperative Group that would give rise to the Galleria del Deposito took shape in Boccadasse — inaugurated on 23 November in a former coal warehouse overlooking the sea — Emanuele Luzzati was among its founding members. Alongside him were Eugenio Carmi, the true driving force behind the initiative, Bruno Alfieri, Kurt Blum, Flavio Costantini, Germano Facetti, Carlo “Popi” Fedeli and Kiky Vices Vinci.

The bond between Carmi and Luzzati, however, did not emerge on the shores of Boccadasse, but had its roots in the dramatic turning point of the Second World War. Targeted by the racial laws, both sought refuge in Switzerland: Carmi in Zug and later Zurich, Luzzati in Lausanne, where he graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts. During that enforced period of stillness, an intellectual and emotional affinity took shape, one that would be rekindled twenty years later, first in the editorial offices of the Italsider magazine and subsequently within the cooperative structure of the Deposito.

Conceived as a laboratory for the experimentation and dissemination of “multiplied art”, the gallery soon attracted the support of critics such as Gillo Dorfles, Germano Beringheli and a very young Germano Celant, as well as gallery owner Paolo Minetti. Its exhibition space hosted works and research by Lucio Fontana (creator of the celebrated Ambiente spaziale a luce nera), Victor Vasarely, Max Bill, Richard Paul Lohse, Jesús Rafael Soto, Achille Perilli, Paolo Scheggi, Getulio Alviani, Piero Dorazio, Enrico Castellani, Corrado Cagli, Gianni Colombo, Agostino Bonalumi, Arnaldo Pomodoro and Joe Tilson.

The theoretical and artistic landscape was firmly dominated by geometric abstraction, programmed and kinetic art, and research into the multiple as a means of democratising the work of art: screen printing in editions of one hundred, conceived as an ethical alternative to the fetishisation of the unique artwork.

Within this context, Luzzati’s presence — as a set designer, illustrator and ceramic artist, already renowned for his theatrical inventions at the Teatro Stabile di Genova — represented an apparent yet significant departure. His artistic language remained resolutely figurative and narrative, indebted to popular tradition and shadow theatre, far removed from Alviani’s optical and perceptual explorations or Vasarely’s modular syntax.

Yet Luzzati was not alone in this departure. Flavio Costantini, too, cultivated a resolutely narrative approach to painting, focusing on historical cycles — anarchist attacks, the sinking of the Titanic, the massacre of the Romanovs — rendered through an incisive, analytical graphic style. Within the Deposito, Luzzati and Costantini thus embodied the same countertrend: the defence of an art that continued to “tell stories” while the depersonalised language of grids and modules was gaining ground all around them.

It is no coincidence that each of them contributed one print to the group’s celebrated portfolio of 32 screen prints, interpreting the serial and ostensibly “cold” medium through their own distinctive graphic sensibilities.

This tension between artistic languages also found expression in the parallel experience of Italsider. Between 1956 and 1965, Carmi served as artistic consultant to Cornigliano (later Italsider), orchestrating an extensive network of visual collaborations around the company’s magazine, involving artists ranging from Alviani and Blum to Kounellis, Manzi and Severini. Within this graphic workshop, both Luzzati and Costantini were invited to contribute their distinctive visual language.

The same educational ambition that animated the Deposito was at work here: to bring contemporary artistic research beyond the traditional circuits of collecting and make it accessible to a wider audience of workers, students and citizens.

Luzzati and Costantini’s contribution therefore served as a valuable mediating force: their narrative approach translated Carmi’s ideal of “art for everyone” into an immediate and accessible visual language. While Vasarely and Bill explored the international visual code of perception, Luzzati and Costantini represented its complementary counterpart, rooted in memory and storytelling.

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