This art compendium is a
nonprofit foundation in Treviso, and it hosts all the pieces from of Ferdinando's Calce collection.
The core of this exhibition is the posters Calce had been devoted to and collected during his life. For over seventy years - beginning to collect at seventeen years old - CPA Salce continued to buy graphic designer's work and kept squeezing them in the family building's attics. He never counted the affiches he used to possessed, until he declared they could have been around 15,000. When Bepi Mazzotti and Luigi Menegazzi archived the work, 24,580 pieces were counted.
The Collezione is kept in Treviso City Centre, in San Gaetano complex, close to Nando's former house of Borgo Mazzini, 48. The building is composed of the museum and Church. The permanent exhibition is a rotation setting in order to preserve the affiches paper condition and to make every piece available to the fruition. The main body refers to the golden age of the Italian posters era, ascribable between 1896 and 1915.
The importance of the collection is renown on a global scale in advertisement industry. Also, it is interesting to admire and recollect some old products we have seen at our grandmother's houses during the late sixties (as the work of arts collecting stops here).
Thus, one could spot the billboard of famous soaps, toothpastes, the icon Olivetti computer, the timeless Necchi sewing machine and popular and everlasting newspapers and weekly magazines such as
Amica,
Corriere della Sera,
Epoca and
Oggi.
During wintertime, from 7 December 2019 to 19 April 2020 a new exhibition has been arranged and is entitled
Colore come Illusione – Color like Illusion, which focuses on the intense chromatic shades used in poster making.
