Vittoria Crespi Morbio

In the latter half of the 1900s, Italian and European theatre was traversed by a radiant streak of light different from any other: the art of Luciano Damiani (Bologna, 1923 – Rome, 2007), set designer, costume designer and director. Not only was he behind many of the legendary stagings directed by Strehler and Ronconi, but he was also the bearer of revolutionary aesthetics, through which the scenic space was projected out toward the audience, incorporating them, questioning them, challenging them. The redistribution of the stage by creating the “poetic angle” and moving the proscenium arch forward; tricks of light through which characters entered and exited the realms of abstraction and reality; the rarefaction of wings and backdrops into something airy and feather-light, are each examples of a boundless imagination, but above all they are glimpses into the essence of theatre, into its mysterious balance between the ephemeral and the eternal. This book retraces the history of an unforgettable artist and, with a wealth of previously unpublished iconography, documents his legacy.