Free Maria Ricci

Born with Parma the December 2nd 1937, Franco Maria Ricci is a editor, Graphiste, Bibliophile and Italian Collectionneur . Founder of the prestigious review FMR and the editions Free Maria Ricci, it published Umberto Eco, Guido Crepax but also a facsimile of the Encyclopédie of Diderot and D' Alembert. It is for this editor that Jorge Luis Borges agreed to direct a collection of literature: the “Library of Babel”.

Biography

Free Maria Ricci was born in Parma on December 2nd, 1937 in an aristocratic family from origin génoise. After having studied the Geology and having worked for oil research, it inaugurates in 1963 its first workshop Graphique, where it produces posters, calendars and catalogs.

Specialist in the work of the Typographe Giambattista Bodoni, which was the director of Stamperia ducal di Parma, it will republish the Manuale tipografico of it, published for the first time in 1818.

In 1963, it founds the editions Franco Maria Ricci, with Milan for Head office, then, in 1982, the review FMR .

Since 1981, he is knight of the Ordre of Arts and the Letters of the French Republic.

In 2002, the Publisher amalgamates with group ARTÉ, founded with Florence ten years earlier, before transferring its seat to Bologna in 2004.

Since 2005, Franco Maria Ricci has been devoted to a project differed for several years: the construction of vast a Labyrinth in the surroundings of Parma. The date of inauguration is not known yet, but it should take place before 2010.

Publications

The publications of Free Maria Ricci, who they are her books, its reviews, its catalogs or its diaries, are characterized by their extreme esthetic refinement, with a prevalence of the black color as a bottom, and by the symbol of the birthplace of the editor: the Violet of Parma, stylized with only three petals. All these publications remain faithful to the Police of writing Bodoni and want to be in themselves of works of Article the books are connected out of black silk and are printed on Papier Fabiano. Some of the collections are with limited pulling.

Books

In 1967, the Ricci house republishes Oratio Dominica, autographée by the Pape Paul VI.

From 1972 to 1980, Ricci publishes in 18 volumes an integral republication of the Encyclopédie of Diderot and D' Alembert, in Fac-similé, then, of 1973 to 1982, 12 volumes of a series devoted to the contemporary graphic designers.

Among the various collections of the Ricci funds, one will undoubtedly quote “the Signs of the man”, most known, who puts in glance a work or an artistic topic and the text of one or several writers. It includes/understands in particular the Beato di Liébana of Umberto Eco, the Fini Mundi of Jorge Luis Borges, the Erté and the Arcimboldo of Roland Barthes, the Alberto Martini of Julio Cortazar and Roberto Tassi, the Delacroix of Tahar Ben Jelloun, the Turchi of Alberto Arbasino, the Alexandre Serebriakoff and the Boldini of Patrick Mauriès, the Ex-Voto of Giorgio Manganelli, the Alberto Savinio of Giuliano Briganti and Leonardo Sciascia…

The library of Borges

In 1977, Jorge Luis Borges created at Franco Maria Ricci the collection “Library of Italian Babel”, published, French and English, now rich of thirty titles. It was the only literary collection directed by Borges. The Library of Babel republished rare works, even untraceable, authors often quoted by the Argentinian writer in his own books: Jacques Cazotte, G.K. Chesterton, Henry James, Jack London, Gustav Meyrinck, Giovanni Papini…

Reviews

In 1984, the Ricci editions launch the review KOS , devoted to science, and in 1988 the review Grand Turn , devoted to cultural and artistic Europe. Both appear in Italian language. Grand Turn will leave thereafter a collection books.

The editor also publishes Quirinal , the review of art and history of the presidency of the Italian République.

Most famous of creations of Free Maria Ricci remains however the review of art FMR , founded in 1982 for its Italian edition, initially in the form of monthly magazine. It is in number 7, of October 1982, that FMR publishes one of the very last texts of Mario Praz, Cere dello Zumbo (“waxes of Zumbo”).

Then FMR will also appear in English, Spanish and French. The first number of the French edition dates from April 1986. The review proposes today six deliveries per annum in each of the four languages. The amateurs describe it as “more beautiful review of the world”, nickname which was given to him by Jacqueline Kennedy while Federico Fellini saw there the “black pearl of the Italian edition”. It is announced in particular by the richness of the Iconographie, the technique of the Détourage of the illustrations and the use of the black bottom.

See too

Internal bonds

External bonds

Interview of Free Maria Ricci
the site of '' FMR ''

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