Seeking Beauty
Anita Klinz

Among the few people who know her work, Anita Klinz is regarded as one of the greatest book designers of the 20th century. Yet despite her impressive output, her career as art director at Milan publishers Mondadori and Il Saggiatore in the 1950s and 60s has never been fully recognised – and much of Klinz’s stunning work has been forgotten. Until now. Luca Pitoni’s Seeking Beauty – Anita Klinz: Pioneer of Modern Book Design reasserts her position as one of Italy’s most formidable graphic designers. The book, originally published in Italy as Ostinata Bellezza: Anita Klinz, prima art director italiana, brought the designer’s work to a wider audience within Klinz’s native country. Now available in English for the first time, Seeking Beauty will reinstate Klinz’s position as one of the greats of modern book design.

Klinz was born in 1923 in Opatija, now part of Croatia. After university in Prague she left the city following the German occupation, for Milan, where she remained for most of her life. In 1951, Klinz joined the publisher Mondadori, working initially as a graphic designer (under Bruno Munari) and then as art director in a long career which included establishing the look of the fledgling publishing house, Il Saggiatore, through a range of publications. While there, Klinz installed a talented team of graphic designers and produced often bold and experimental book covers that regularly featured striking typography or eye-catching imagery.

Klinz’s work is a balance of these dramatic yet controlled visual approaches; she embraced abstract visual ideas, incorporated bright colours and innovative type treatments across niche and mainstream titles. For The Great Masters of Contemporary Architecture books, Klinz created one of her most celebrated series designs, where each minimalist cover referenced the work of a particular architect through a simple visual suggestion of their work. As an art director, she also collaborated with several well-known illustrators, including Ferruccio Bocca, Ferenc Pintér and Karel Thole. By the early 1970s, Il Saggiatore had folded and Klinz returned to Mondadori to work on various magazines and newspapers. According to Pitoni, her life gradually became more isolated (she spent much time on the small island of Giannutri) before she retired into what was effectively “a professional and personal silence”.