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STUDIO STEFANIA MISCETTI is pleased to present MY GENERATIONS, an exhibition showcasing a vast and varied selection of artifacts, produced between 1944 and 1976, from the eclectic collection of director, producer, writer, and screenwriter Giancarlo Soldi. Through a journey of images, words, sounds, and video, the exhibition offers an unprecedented glimpse into the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States, United Kingdom, and France, with particular emphasis on the beat generation, psychedelia, underground movements, and the French May ‘68.

Among the “relics” curated by Soldi and featured in the exhibition are: the mock-up of a book rejected by Italian publishers, containing forty negatives from the beat generation, some previously unpublished; beat generation magazines such as Beat Scene and City Light Journal; American underground magazines like Berkeley Tribe, The Other, Helix; English psychedelic magazines such as Oz and It, along with their posters; photos, flyers, and posters from San Francisco’s Fillmore East; posters, iconic photos, flyers, and magazines from the Paris May ’68 protests; posters, photos, and features from Time, Rolling Stone, Life, Observer, Telegraph, from Woodstock to Kathmandu; and underground comics from San Francisco.

“When Annamaria Gandini called me, she said, ‘There’s something else I need to give you. I found another box, with your name written on it by Giovanni. Were you looking for something from the Beat Generation? I have it!’
Sometimes, this would happen. Some of my friends, much older than me, would leave me a ‘legacy’: drawings, letters, film frames, scattered pages, old magazines brimming with stories, smelling of History, my history.
This interest of mine grew over time, almost without me noticing because comics were my primary passion.
Still a minor in the early Seventies, I would go around to underground editorial offices in London—’It,’ ‘Oz,’ ‘Frendz’—and, for just a few pennies, pick up bundles of back issues, convincing myself I was a young rebellious rocker.
In the coming years I continued to nurture this passion: photos, magazines, flyers, posters, fanzines. Comics were my main collection, while the counterculture artifacts risked being buried, unorganized, on my shelves. But the ‘legacies’ kept coming. So, about a decade ago, I decided I would dedicate all my energies to preserving this ‘Archive,’ to save these ‘relics,’ these ‘humble papers.’
There is archival footage never seen before, tapes that stir me when I listen to them, magazines that, when touched, bring back emotions. All these connections, the stories that each object contains, they bring joy.
I realize that preserving materials like this–private Super 8 footage, photos, magazines, handwritten letters, preparatory sketches, unique originals–has been an unexpected gift. Something entrusted to me, which I received and, through my work, now strive to return.
Words, sounds, and images are places of the soul, and to collect, study, and safeguard them has been, for me, a kind of fatal attraction, keeping me from what, as a ‘collector,’ I am simply unable to conceive of: oblivion.”

Giancarlo Soldi

Read and download the exhibition press release: ITA | ENG

artist.