Silvio COPPOLA

Silvio Coppola, graduated in Architecture at the Milan Polytechnic, has worked in the most varied areas of the project, from architecture to furniture, industrial design, visual communication. As an architect he created buildings in Baghdad, university cities in Zaire, houses and hotels in various Italian cities, becoming in 1965 the designer of the European Development Fund of the EEC. In the field of interior design, industrial design and visual communication, Coppola has worked as a consultant and collaborator in large Italian and foreign industries including Bayer, Montecatini, Monteschell, Zucchi, Cinzano, Alessi, Cassina, Parmalat, Feltrinelli , Bernini; for the latter, Coppola not only created significant design products, now in great demand by the most prestigious auction houses, but also contributed to the creation of important corporate visual communication tools such as catalogs, invitations and posters, renouncing the obviousness of coated paper to prefer sheets of transparent PVC heat-counterplated with a layer of metal. In 1967 he founded with Munari, Grignani and others the research group on pre-design called Exhibition Design, with which he exhibited at the Palazzo Reale in Milan (1969) and in Barcelona (1970). He participated with his works in the Arflex exhibitions in Milan and Rome (1967), in the exhibition organized by Aiap in Paris (1968), in the Olivetti exhibitions in Barcelona, Seville, Madrid, Copenhagen (1971), in the Italy: The New Domestic Landscape at MoMA in New York (1972). With Pino Tovaglia he conceived the poster for the Barcelona exhibition Six Italian Graphic Designers (1971). Among the various awards received are the Palme d'Or for advertising in 1962 and the Rizzoli European Award in 1966. He was a member of ADI, Aiap, AIGA in New York and AGI, of which he held for two years the post of vice president. He is responsible for the study and creation of the label of the Tignanello (1971), a well-known and award-winning wine from the Antinori cellars. Later he designed other labels including those of the Ceretto family wines: Blangè, Dolcetto, Nebbiolo, Barbera, Barolo and Barbaresco (1981). He taught design at the Gesamthochschule in Essen and at the University of Wuppertal in Germany. Projects by him can be found, among others, in the collections of the MoMA in New York, in museums in Warsaw and Paris, at the Achille Bertarelli Civic Collection of Prints of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan. /