Animali in Viaggio

Pia Valentinis

After missing it when it first opened last March at Zoo in Bologna, 

this Saturday I was finally able to see the Animali in Viaggio exhibition 

when it arrived for a short stay at the Babele bookstore in Firenze. 

Antonio Marinoni

I was interested in this show for a good number of reasons: it's inspired by Franco Matticchio's latest book

 Libretto Postale, it's organized by two ladies I really like, the illustrator and blogger Anna Castagnoli

 and Stefania Camilli, publisher of Vànvere Edizioni, it's an innovative idea and it features

 lots of lovely animal pictures by many of my favorite Italian illustrators. 

Last but not least, I love mail art...

Daniela Tieni

Francesco Chiacchio

Anna and Stefania came up with the idea of a mail art game while discussing the aptness

of detaching the postcards included in Franco's beautiful book (Anna gave a very good account

 of the creative process behind the project on her blog Le figure dei libri). The final concept involved

 sending one of seven postcards from the book (dog, elephant, cat, penguins, chick, squirrel, crocodile)

to seven different illustrators, who would create a postcard continuing their animal's story

 and then send it to another illustrator, who would in turn do the same, 

resulting in a series of 62 postcards by Italian and Japanese artists.

Claudia Palmarucci

Mauro Evangelista

Beppe Giacobbe

Marina Marcolin

Simone Rea

Maurizio Quarello

Alessandra Vitelli

Sergio Ruzzier

Tiziana Romanin

Satoko Watanabe

Nanoa Katayama

Maya Miyama

I really enjoyed the show and am glad I finally caught up with it, if you want to see it too

its next stops will be in Udine, Tokyo and Barcelona...