Gucci supports Paolo Di Paolo

Gucci has always been rooted in the world of the arts — supporting projects, collaborations and exhibitions — steeped in heritage, history and anthropological discourse. And the deep bond which Gucci’s creative director — Alessandro Michele shares with artists across the board gets stronger. The latest illustrious project in this long litany of the Gucci and the arts ecosystem is the limited edition volume Paolo Di Paolo. Mondo Perduto. Photographs 1954-1968 is a celebration of this refined artist. This project, which was entrusted to Giovanna Calvenzi with the collaboration of Silvia Di Paolo, is strongly supported and promoted by GUCCI and its creative director Alessandro Michele. 

Extraordinary moments in Italy’s history 

Thanks to this volume, for the first time more than 300 photographs taken between 1954 and 1968 are made available to the public. The work also contains commentary from important personalities from culture, journalism and photography such as Paolo Pellegrin, Mario Calabresi, Emanuele Trevi, Marco Belpoliti, Giovanna Calvenzi and Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, as well as writing by Di Paolo himself and a biography by Silvia Di Paolo, his daughter.

How it all began

In 1949, a boy fell in love with a Leica III C camera; he really did not know how it worked, but he thought that it was a beautiful object. He would go on to publish more than 500 pictures in which figures from the worlds of art, culture, fashion and cinema, alongside ordinary people, are presented in a way that tells the story of Italy as it emerges from the ashes of the Second World War; these were featured in the famous weekly magazine Il Mondo, which was directed by Mario Pannunzio in the 1950s.

Breathtaking imagery

Among the subjects of these famous pictures are Pier Paolo Pasolini at parties in Roman palaces, Tennessee Williams on the beach with his dog, Anna Magnani with her son, Kim Novak ironing in a room at the Grand Hotel, Rome, a family in front of the sea in Rimini, Salvatore Quasimodo, Sofia Loren joking around with Marcello Mastroianni in the Cinecittà studios, Brigitte Bardot, Charlotte Rampling, Alberto Moravia, Federico Fellini, Yves Montand, and the faces of distressed people at Palmiro Togliatti’s funeral. These are images taken by Paolo Di Paolo, an extraordinary photographer, and story-teller of the Italy of the 1950s and 1960s.

Rome’s MAXXI museum announced a significant exhibition dedicated to the work of Paolo Di Paolo in March 2019.