Sport told with art

Competition, knowledge, competence, community. Sport is all this and with these coordinates it tells it, also investigating behind the scenes, The sports workshop. The teams, research, technology, passion and social valuespublished by Marsilio Arte and curated by the Pirelli Foundation.

Published in an Italian version and a separate English version, the editorial project documents the construction sites, the “workshops”, the laboratories, the sports product factories; the backstage of the competitions; the voices, the sounds, the hymns; the staging and narration of sport. It’s still: sport in the company at the center of corporate welfare initiatives between past and present.

The book is divided into one introductory section with institutional contributions by Marco Tronchetti Provera, Giovanni Malagò, Evelina Christillin and Stefano Domenicali; a narrative section with a story by the writer Joe Lansdale and other contributions on the link between Pirelli and sport by Antonio Calabrò, Ambrogio Beccaria, Mario Isola; a non-fiction section with insights into the many aspects of the sporting world by Eva Cantarella, Emanuela Audisio, Giuseppe Di Piazza, Darwin Pastorin, Giuseppe Lupo. To complete the book, a series of thematic sheets on sports fields which Pirelli has been a protagonist in throughout its history.

The book is enriched by six original illustrations by Lorenzo Mattottiwhich you can find on this page, and over one hundred rare and precious images from the Pirelli Historical Archive.

The web platform is also associated with the editorial project Pirelli Sport Workshopon which users will be able to delve deeper into all the contents of the volume, with a timeline dedicated to Pirelli’s passion for sport, to be relived in over 150 years of company history.

Sport told with art

The relationship between sport and the company is almost contemporary with the birth of the latter, way back in 1872. The Pirelli Foundation dedicates the publication to all aspects surrounding the fundamental moment of sporting competition. Research laboratories, technologies, athlete preparation and work sites therefore become the protagonists of this volume. A real journey behind the scenes of the competitions, in which ideas and testimonies of sports institutions, protagonists of the economy and sport, writers and journalists find voice in a choral story that Marco Tronchetti Provera, president of the Pirelli Foundation, defines as « a stimulus to continue to grow business culture and sporting culture as pillars of community spirit.”

At the opening of the volume are the institutional texts by Tronchetti Provera, the president of CONI Giovanni Malagò, the president of the Egyptian Museum of Turin Evelina Christillin and Stefano Domenicali, president and CEO of Formula One. The words of these personalities, experts in the sports disciplines linked to the Pirelli world and in the history of Pirelli in sport, focus on champions as a metaphor for competitiveness, records and conquest. The introductory part is completed by the contributions of Antonio Calabrò, director of the Pirelli Foundation, and the American writer Joe R. Landsdale, who offer new insights into sport understood as community, challenge and self-overcoming.

Sport told with art

Continued History of our experiences, a narrative section which, through the words of Mario Isola, Pirelli Motorsport director, the ocean sailor Ambrogio Beccaria and the writer Daniele Pirola, recounts some fundamental stages of the sporting culture promoted by the Pirelli Foundation. A subsequent non-fiction section investigates the behind the scenes of the competitive world: from the workshops to the laboratories, from the manufacturing of sports products to the backstage of competitions. And again, the story of sport from art to photography, from theater to cinema, from journalism to the famous sports news of the Pirelli magazine.

All these facets emerge in Speaking of champions: music, techniques, images, in which texts written by famous writers and journalists such as Eva Cantarella, Emanuela Audisio, Giuseppe Lupo, Giuseppe Di Piazza, Darwin Pastorin, Massimo Sideri and Sandro Modeo describe the sporting discipline as a lifestyle, between past and present. The volume is completed by thematic factsheets on the sporting fields in which Pirelli has played a leading role throughout its history – above all Formula I, rally, motorcycling, cycling, sailing, athletics and football.

Sport told with art

The book will be presented in Milan, at the Franco Parenti Theatre, on Wednesday 26 June at 7pm.
Speakers will include the executive vice president of Pirelli Marco Tronchetti Provera, the director of
Pirelli Foundation Antonio Calabrò, the historian Eva Cantarella, the president of the Egyptian Museum
of Turin and FIFA councilor Evelina Christillin, the president and CEO of Formula 1 Stefano
Domenicali, and Pirelli Motorsport Director Mario Isola. In video link, the writer
Joe Lansdale and the ocean sailor Ambrogio Beccaria.

For the occasion, the foyer of the theater and the Bagni Misteriosi will be set up with installations inspired by the sporting world, created starting from images from the Pirelli Historical Archive, and with scale reproductions of the unpublished plates created by the artist Lorenzo Mattotti to illustrate the volume .

Sport told with art

Source: Vanity Fair

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