Olimpia Zagnoli
'Multifaceted'
Artist and designer Olimpia Zagnoli is world-renowned for her iconic pop-deco illustrations that frequently appear in major magazines, books, merchandise, and advertisements. Zagnoli’s process begins in the sketchbook, where her drawings take inspiration from her everyday surroundings and happenstance encounters, sharpening into stylized shapes imbued with vibrant colors that enhance their communicative power. For her site-specific installation in the museum’s public-facing Jewel Box vitrines, Zagnoli transposes her bold images from their two-dimensional format into large-scale sculptures with careful consideration of every line, angle, and hue. Zagnoli populates each space with a portrait of an invented character enshrined in a layered technicolor composition that plays with the rules of the grid. Inviting passersby into her creative universe, she creates a trail of graphic vignettes along the museum’s façade, imparting the impact of image-making while celebrating the elasticity of our identities.
Artist and designer Olimpia Zagnoli is world-renowned for her iconic pop-deco illustrations that frequently appear in major magazines, books, merchandise, and advertisements. Zagnoli’s process begins in the sketchbook, where her drawings take inspiration from her everyday surroundings and happenstance encounters, sharpening into stylized shapes imbued with vibrant colors that enhance their communicative power. For her site-specific installation in the museum’s public-facing Jewel Box vitrines, Zagnoli transposes her bold images from their two-dimensional format into large-scale sculptures with careful consideration of every line, angle, and hue. Zagnoli populates each space with a portrait of an invented character enshrined in a layered technicolor composition that plays with the rules of the grid. Inviting passersby into her creative universe, she creates a trail of graphic vignettes along the museum’s façade, imparting the impact of image-making while celebrating the elasticity of our identities.
About the artist
Olimpia Zagnoli (b. 1984, Montecchio Emilia, Italy) is an illustrator and multidisciplinary artist living and working in Milan. Zagnoli studied illustration and animation at the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED), graduating in 2007. Her soft shapes and chameleonic colors have since appeared around the world in books and magazines, galleries and sculpture gardens, on supermarket shelves and at subway stops. Zagnoli’s vibrant body of work ranges in style and scale from sheets of stamps and espresso cups to multilevel murals and larger-than-life installations, drawing inspiration from Jacques Tati, True Romance, and her grandmother’s tortellini. Zagnoli’s clients include The New York Times, Google, Prada, Uniqlo, the Guggenheim Museum, Vogue, Public Art Fund, The Guardian, Eataly, Dior, and the United Nations, among others. In December 2023, she published her fourth cover with The New Yorker, titled “Let There Be Lights.” She has also published and contributed to numerous books with acclaimed houses including Phaidon, Penguin, Taschen, and Feltrinelli. In 2021, Zagnoli released her first retrospective monograph, Caleidoscopica, with Lazy Dog Press. Alongside her two-dimensional work, she has experimented with kinetic sculptures, neon design, music videos, and ceramics and exhibited work internationally at galleries in Milan, Los Angeles, and Düsseldorf, as well as institutions including Chiostri di San Pietro in Emilia-Romagna and the Sejong Center in Seoul. Her mixed-media exhibition ZaLiZaZa: Inventario di famiglia opened in September 2023 at Galleria Antonio Colombo in Milan.
Programs and events
Reception: SCAD Museum of Art fall exhibitions opening
Join the SCAD Museum of Art in celebration of new exhibitions opening in the fall.
Credits
Multifaceted is organized by SCAD Museum of Art assistant curator Brittany Richmond.
