Franco Grignani (1908-1999)

Perhaps best remembered for his iconic designs for the Woolmark logo, which he created in 1963, Franco Grignani was a leading force in international Post-War graphic design. He began his career as an architect before branching into design and painting, holding the position of Art Director at the influential Milanese lifestyle magazine Bellezza d’Italia for much of the 1950s. Here, his iconic, distorted, Futurist typography and impactful cover designs brought him to international attention, while his personal practice remained steeped in the dynamic visual processes of photography, photomontage, and optical painting. Proiezione Accumulata forms part of a series of experiments that Grignani conducted during the 1960s, in which he carefully analysed the sensations of vision, playing with the mechanics of the image and harnessing optical illusion to animate static geometric forms and incite psychological responses in the viewer. The work focuses on three spiralling vortexes, which appear to shift, warp and vibrate before the viewer so that their stark, graphic forms simultaneously project towards and recede away from the picture plane. The effect of these oscillating spirals is heightened by the simplicity of their design, as the black and white stripes contrast starkly against one another, drawing sharp attention to the manner in which they wrap themselves around one another in an elegant rotation.