 |
The Archive |  |
Happenings and Exhibitions | |
Shop on line | |
News | |
Site map |
|
Library Periodicals Library Film Library Photograph Library Audio Library Graphics Art Library The Olivetti Family The Olivetti Company Personalities Link |
|
|
Library One of the main collections are the books published by Edizioni di Comunità (the publishing house founded by Adriano Olivetti). The Library contains all the various series published by the house - hundreds of books, many of which are now untraceable - illustrating the thought of some of the century's best minds. Authors include Theodor Adorno, Norberto Bobbio, Martin Buber, Paul Claudel, Emile Durkheim, Luigi Einaudi, Erich Fromm, Georges Friedmann, John Kenneth Galbraith, Karl Jaspers, Carl Gustav Jung, Sören Kierkegaard, Jacques Maritain, Ludovico Quaroni, Max Weber, Simone Weil, writing on issues relating to history, politics, sociology, economics, law, religion, psychoanalysis, psychology, pedagogy, philosophy, the arts, architecture, town planning . Edizioni di Comunità, it should be noted, was one of Italy's most important publishing houses in the postwar period, the cultural heart of the complex array of social and political activities built up in a few short years by that positive utopian - Ferruccio Parri's description - Adriano Olivetti. The Library therefore includes the books in the Quaderni series published by the Adriano Olivetti Foundation, with research by major institutions and articles by distinguished writers like Schlesinger, Spinelli, Lunati, Gottfried, Acquaviva, Berta, Predieri, to mention just a few. Another section of the Library is dedicated to the areas in which Olivetti has built a reputation for excellence: Advertising, Industrial Design, Ergonomics, Architecture, Town Planning, Organisation of Labour, Social Services, R&D, Training. The section entitled Company History is more specific, with books on key company figures, on Olivetti's history or on particular aspects of its complex industrial evolution: its products, the innovative solutions adopted in the organisation of labour, the main technological turning points, the company's national and international standing. The editorial quality and range of contents makes the section on the company's in-house publishing unique: this activity, which could be classified under the general heading of promotional work, spanned almost fifty years and saw the production of hundreds of items, from Diaries and Gift Books to Calendars and Monographs. An admirable Olivetti "invention" in its own right, this publishing work was rewarded by strong demand for the items produced. The Olivetti and "Polifilo" Collection - which could be more aptly defined as Documents on the art of the book - merits a specific mention. Someone wrote that these books are of such high quality that they should come with a book-rest. Olivetti's major cultural projects and art events are the subject of the collection of Exhibition Catalogues and the extraordinary Restoration Notebooks series. Two prestigious sets of volumes, which show that the company's cultural activities were the result not of a sort of sponsorship fever but of a genuine commitment to culture, whose goal was to create an identity that could only be developed through minutely planned and expertly managed high-level cultural projects consistent with Olivetti's corporate image. Of the dozens of Olivetti exhibitions, many were international events that achieved wide and lasting fame: Frescoes from Florence, The Gianni Mattioli Collection, Masters of Modern Italian Art 1910-1935, The Horses of San Marco Venice, Mexican Masks, The Cimabue Crucifix, The Treasury of San Marco Venice, Glass of the Caesars, . During the 1950s and 1960s, the Movimento di Comunità socio-political project conceived and developed by Adriano Olivetti published a large number of leaflets, in various languages. With their succinct contents and practical format, these leaflets were effective vehicles for spreading the movement's thinking. |
|
| Who | |
Contacts | |
Consultation rules |
© 1999 - 2008