In the evening of 20th April Milan’s Sticker Album, a project by Corriere della Sera carried out in cooperation with BPM (Banca Popolare di Milano), was presented in front of the general public gathered in the Auletta di Rappresentanza del Senato Accademico by Giangiacomo Schiavi, deputy editor of the Corriere della Sera, who is one of this Album’s curators.
Milan’s Sticker Album has the classic format of all sticker albums. In this case the stickers depict 150 portraits made by Emilio Giannelli, well-known cartoonist publishing his works in the front page of the Corriere. On sale at newsagents’ since the end of March (in Milan and province) with packets of stickers to collect each week, Milan’s Sticker Album was created with a view to making people get to know – by attracting their attention, without taking things too seriously – the personalities that in 150 years (from 1865 to the present day) have made this city so great.
Giangiacomo Schiavi explained that this idea was initially proposed by the Corriere’s editorial staff as a sort of dream, but then, in recent weeks, the dream has come true and the initiative has been largely appreciated by readers, even younger ones.
One of the objectives of this project was that of making young people meet the personalities who turned Milan into the driving force of ideas, work, art, culture and acceptance we all know today. Giangiacomo Schiavi mentioned a few of them, such as Alda Merini and Indro Montanelli, while the skillfully sketched portraits were being projected one after another: Giuseppe Verdi, Alessandro Manzoni, Claudio Abbado, Enzo Iannacci, Dino Buzzati, Eugenio Montale, Fernanda Pivano. Gae Aulenti, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, thus taking into consideration all the sectors in which Milan has been playing a leading role in Italy, from theatre to politics, from design to journalism and voluntary work.
To make the Milanese – both present and future – remember that today Milan is still a place of opportunities and, quoting Guido Piovene, “an America without cruelty”.
Text by Antonella Galli