Collection comprises predominantly posters, with additional material including working drawings, mock-ups, calendar designs and cartoons, created by Vittorio Fiorucci, known professionally as Vittorio.
Included in the fonds are posters created for the National Arts Centre Theatre Company; the National Film Board of Canada; the Montreal International Film Festival; l'Orchestre Symphonique; the National Ballet of Canada; le Centrale d'artisinat; the tourism bureau for the cities of Quebec and Montreal; various cultural agencies on the municipal, provincial and federal levels; art exhibitions for such artists as Armand Vaillancourt and Peter Gnass; and for Vittorio Fiorruci's own exhibitions and retrospectives, including one at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1978 and the National Arts Centre in 1987.
Vittorio, 1932-2008 : Vittorio Fiorucci, known professionally as Vittorio, was born in 1932 in Zara, Yugoslavia, a territory then occupied by Italy. In 1944, he and his family moved to Venice. Seven years later, in 1951, Vittorio applied to emigrate to Canada and was sent, initially, to an immigration camp in Saint-Paul-l'Ermite. Four months later, he moved on to Montreal.
Over the next few decades, Vittorio gained a solid reputation in many facets of the design world. In the 1950s, he was a political cartoonist and, early in the 1960s, was art director of a literary and political magazine entitled "Exchange". In 1964, he was art director of the Montreal International Film Festival for which he designed their first posters. Vittorio's cartoons were featured in several of Robert La Palme's International Salons of Cartoon Art at Man and his World. His photographic work was used for many covers of the Canadian editions of "Time" magazine and he was included in an Eastman House exhibition in Rochester, New York, entitled the "International Exhibition of the World's Greatest Photographers". In 1978, Vittorio won "Best of Show" in Chicago for his poster work which, later that year, was featured in a one-person show at the Vancouver Art Gallery. By the 1980s, Vittorio's designs were recognized through retrospectives in Paris, Brussels, New York, Berlin and Rome. In 1983, the Musée d'art contemporain, in Montreal, held a large exhibition of his work. His graphic posters were also featured, together with three other Quebec designers, in a 1987 exhibition of movie and theatre posters at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.
Vittorio is perhaps best-known for his character "Bonhomme", an elastic stone-age creature which has become the mascot for the Montreal comedy festival "Just for Laughs". His art is notable for its crispness of design, an evocative use of colour and the clear immediacy of the message he wishes to convey. See artist's file no. 705-2539.
