Lorenzo Mattotti: ENCHANTED PASTELS…

Cover “The New Yorker”, Lorenzo Mattotti

“Doris” Beatrice Brandini

Lorenzo Mattotti is one of the largest designers and contemporary artists. His works are published in the most important Italian and foreign newspapers and magazines like the New Yorker, Le Monde, Das Magazin, Nouvel Observateur, Corriere della Sera and Repubblica, and his books translated everywhere. Another excellence of Made in Italy, recognized and respected throughout the world.

Lorenzo Mattotti

Among the countless things he has done there is also a constant collaboration with fashion, in fact in the eighties he interpreted, with his unmistakable pencil, the clothes of the major designers (booming Stilistas / Made in Italy) for the glorious magazine Vanity (created by Anna Piaggi, designed, among others, by Antonio Lopez).

“Rooms” Lorenzo Mattotti

He has illustrated children’s books, winning the Grand Prix of Bratislava, one of the most important awards in publishing for young people, and bringing to the big screen the story of Pinocchio, which he previously illustrated with great style and imagination. I saw the movie and I have to say it was not easy to do something new with respect to a tale already enormously “exploited” and from which they have drawn all, instead Mattotti succeeded. In fact, his Pinocchio is something completely different, poetic, dreamy, dramatic, evocative, pure colors and vibrant, characterized by the unmistakable landscapes “Mattottiani.” For me really beautiful!

Design for Pinocchio, Lorenzo Mattotti

He has made memorable posters, like the one for the Roman Summer, for the chocolate fair in Turin, Cannes, Sanremo. He has worked with directors such as Antonioni, Soderbergh and Wong Kar-Wai for the film “Eros”, anticipating each episode with illustrations (in my opinion the most beautiful ever made). He has collaborated in the creation of memorable advertising. But although it has often tried his hand at different things, he did change his beliefs, often experimenting with new territories, has always shown a great consistency.

Cover “The New Yorker”, Lorenzo Mattotti

Important publications such as the unforgettable “Fires” of 1984, the first canticle of the Divine Comedy, “Inferno”; “Jekyll & Hyde”, an adaptation of Stevenson’s novel, the saga of “Pittipotti”, children’s books; “The Raven” that illustrates the lyrics of ‘self-titled album of Lou Reed, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe.

“The Raven”, Lorenzo Mattotti

“Vampires,” Lorenzo Mattotti

What has always struck me in his characters is the interiority, the ability to investigate the psychology of the represented subject; in the same way, that is, with amazement and enchantment, for which I consider Mattotti’s landscapes unique. In fact, they are not scenes of the subject, contours, but they are the plot and the theme itself of history, also animated “subjects”. And beyond the graphic sign of great expressive power and excellent technique, whether it ordeals with crayons, pencils, inks or oils, what strikes Mattotti is just that investigate the human soul. Here naughty puppet Pinocchio is transformed from a symbol of childlike naivety; that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde become a metaphor of human folly and contradiction that nourishes all souls; that a theme like “Eros” rhetoric that could be sexual and sensual, becomes union and communion of bodies like a caress, like a butterfly, golden bodies, a unique thing, the most natural on earth…

Design from the book “In the water” and the film “Eros”, Lorenzo Mattotti

Cover “Internazionale” and Cover “The New Yorker”, Lorenzo Mattotti

I remember a beautiful exhibition in Siena, Santa Maria della Scala, dedicated to posters of Mattotti, in which each sketch, table, painting was a work in itself, impressive (even very small ones, such as the table of the poster for the exhibition itself), evidence of an evocative and unique creative talent in the world.