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Vittorio Fiorucci

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Vittorio Fiorucci

Birth
Italy
Death
30 Jul 2008 (aged 75)
Montreal, Montreal Region, Quebec, Canada
Burial
Montreal, Montreal Region, Quebec, Canada Add to Map
Plot
Section ND, Lot 10118
Memorial ID
View Source
Quebec graphic artist Vittorio Fiorucci dies-

Vittorio Fiorucci, one of the country's most acclaimed graphic artists best known for the chuckling satyr that's become the mascot of the Just for Laughs Comedy festival, died yesterday in Montreal. He was 75.

Vittorio Fiorucci, one of the country's most acclaimed graphic artists best known for the chuckling satyr that's become the mascot of the Just for Laughs Comedy festival, died yesterday in Montreal. He was 75.

Fiorucci was a boulevardier, raconteur, and a gregarious self-confessed hedonist who owned seven vintage cars as well as an outstanding collection of antique mechanical toys.

"There are two types of people in the world, people who are themselves, and people who go through life pretending they are somebody else," he once said, "They can never say I was never myself."

During his career Fiorucci designed more than 300 art posters and turned out eight covers for Time magazine. His work is a combination of the bawdy and the beautiful, the comic and the sad. It is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Poster Collection in Ottawa, the Toronto Metroplolican Library, and Montreal's Musée d'Art Contemporain.

Fiorucci was born in Zara, Yugoslavia, to Italian parents on Nov. 2, 1932, and grew up in Venice. He came to Canada when he was 19.

"I thought I was going to be a short-story writer," he once said. "But when I came to Montreal I couldn't speak English, I couldn't speak French, I couldn't rely on language so I used cartoons without words to express
myself. It just happened. I started doodling, and I started doing posters. It was an accident."

His first poster was a handbill he designed in the spring of 1962 to advertise Norman Mailer's visit to Montreal. Then he did the poster for Claude Jutra's first film, À Tout Prendre. He was hired by the fledgling Montreal International Film Festival as art director and in 1964 won first prize in the Czech International Poster contest for his stylized portrait of an Italian Carbonari.

He often said he fulfilled his ambition to write short stories, but not as he had planned. "Posters, are after all, short novels of art."

The little green man that became the symbol of the Montreal International Comedy Festival was, he said, autobiographical, a self-caricature that evolved over 40 years.

Despite his international reputation, he was not well known in English Canada. He is mentioned in the French Encyclopedia Universalis and Who's Who in Graphic Art, but not in the Canadian Encyclopedia.

"When I do a job in English they are always worried I am going to slip some subliminal obscene thing into the design," he once told The Gazette, "The French don't care."
Quebec graphic artist Vittorio Fiorucci dies-

Vittorio Fiorucci, one of the country's most acclaimed graphic artists best known for the chuckling satyr that's become the mascot of the Just for Laughs Comedy festival, died yesterday in Montreal. He was 75.

Vittorio Fiorucci, one of the country's most acclaimed graphic artists best known for the chuckling satyr that's become the mascot of the Just for Laughs Comedy festival, died yesterday in Montreal. He was 75.

Fiorucci was a boulevardier, raconteur, and a gregarious self-confessed hedonist who owned seven vintage cars as well as an outstanding collection of antique mechanical toys.

"There are two types of people in the world, people who are themselves, and people who go through life pretending they are somebody else," he once said, "They can never say I was never myself."

During his career Fiorucci designed more than 300 art posters and turned out eight covers for Time magazine. His work is a combination of the bawdy and the beautiful, the comic and the sad. It is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Poster Collection in Ottawa, the Toronto Metroplolican Library, and Montreal's Musée d'Art Contemporain.

Fiorucci was born in Zara, Yugoslavia, to Italian parents on Nov. 2, 1932, and grew up in Venice. He came to Canada when he was 19.

"I thought I was going to be a short-story writer," he once said. "But when I came to Montreal I couldn't speak English, I couldn't speak French, I couldn't rely on language so I used cartoons without words to express
myself. It just happened. I started doodling, and I started doing posters. It was an accident."

His first poster was a handbill he designed in the spring of 1962 to advertise Norman Mailer's visit to Montreal. Then he did the poster for Claude Jutra's first film, À Tout Prendre. He was hired by the fledgling Montreal International Film Festival as art director and in 1964 won first prize in the Czech International Poster contest for his stylized portrait of an Italian Carbonari.

He often said he fulfilled his ambition to write short stories, but not as he had planned. "Posters, are after all, short novels of art."

The little green man that became the symbol of the Montreal International Comedy Festival was, he said, autobiographical, a self-caricature that evolved over 40 years.

Despite his international reputation, he was not well known in English Canada. He is mentioned in the French Encyclopedia Universalis and Who's Who in Graphic Art, but not in the Canadian Encyclopedia.

"When I do a job in English they are always worried I am going to slip some subliminal obscene thing into the design," he once told The Gazette, "The French don't care."

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