Master Printer Giorgio Upiglio’s Libri d’Artista
Master printer Giorgio Upiglio at work in his Milan studio, Grafica Uno.
In a courtyard near Milan’s Pirelli Tower, Giorgio Upiglio (1932–2013) spent decades turning artists’ ideas into prints, portfolios, and libri d’artista. “A good artist must manage to master the technique, not be mastered by it,” he observed. At Grafica Uno, the studio he opened in the early 1960s, that conviction guided collaborations with Marcel Duchamp, Lucio Fontana, Giorgio de Chirico, Alberto Burri, Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta, and other leading twentieth-century artists.
Inside Grafica Uno
Upiglio began learning the printing trade at the age of twelve, working with his father and uncle in the family printworks. In the early 1960s, he installed his own presses on Via Fara and established Grafica Uno as a workshop devoted to original prints and artist’s books.
A master printer does more than reproduce an image. Specializing in lithography, etching, and aquatint, Upiglio worked directly with artists, testing plates, inks, papers, pressure, and color until an experiment became an edition. Artists brought images or ideas into the studio; through this collaborative process, artist and printer discovered how those ideas could live on paper.
Grafica Uno participated in the international revival of the artist’s book after World War II. Upiglio’s work received prominent recognition in the Museum of Modern Art’s 1992–1993 exhibition The Artist and the Book in Twentieth-Century Italy, a major survey of illustrated texts, poems accompanied by prints, conceptual books, and other collaborations among Italian artists, writers, printers, and publishers.
A Spanish-Language Artist’s Book in Milan
Among Grafica Uno’s international collaborations was El libro de payasos y bufones, a 1987 artist’s book pairing fifteen prose poems in Spanish by Puerto Rican writer Giannina Braschi with five original color aquatints by Italian artist Rita Gallé.
The project brought Latin American experimental poetry into conversation with Italian printmaking. Braschi’s clowns, buffoons, magicians, animals, and dreamers meet Gallé’s visual language in a book that operates neither as an illustrated poetry collection nor as a portfolio with accompanying text. Poetry and image retain their independence while creating a third, collaborative form.
El libro de payasos y bufones by Giannina Braschi and Rita Gallé, printed and published by Giorgio Upiglio at Grafica Uno in Milan, 1987.
Featured Edition: El libro de payasos y bufones (1987)
- Title: El libro de payasos y bufones
- Poems: Giannina Braschi
- Aquatints: Rita Gallé
- Printer and publisher: Giorgio Upiglio, Grafica Uno
- Place and date: Milan, 1987
- Contents: Fifteen prose poems and five original full-color aquatints
- Edition: 125 numbered copies signed by Braschi and Gallé
The poems later became part of Braschi’s El imperio de los sueños, which gathers six books of Spanish poetry into a postmodern epic.
Read two poems from the book and explore their later film interpretations in Spanish Caribbean Poems.
Preserving the Grafica Uno Legacy
The principal archive of the Grafica Uno workshop was donated in 1996 to the Archivio del Moderno at the Università della Svizzera italiana. Its plates, proofs, layouts, photographs, portfolios, and documents allow scholars to reconstruct the process through which Upiglio and his collaborators created prints and artist’s books.
The university’s research project traces Upiglio’s work from his first experiments in Milan during the late 1950s through the mature international collaborations of Grafica Uno.
A related collection at Casa Planeta in Menfi, Sicily, honors Rita Gallé and Giorgio Upiglio through works and materials connected with their artistic lives. Gallé, a painter and jewelry designer who spent her childhood in Menfi, donated a personal collection of her work to the city. Upiglio subsequently added prints, portfolios, plates, and artist’s books associated with Grafica Uno.
Explore the permanent collection through La Rete Museale e Naturale Belicina.
Collections and Research
- Fondazione Cologni: Interview with Giorgio Upiglio
- MoMA: The Artist and the Book in Twentieth-Century Italy
- Università della Svizzera italiana: Giorgio Upiglio and Grafica Uno Research Project
- Rete Museale e Naturale Belicina: Rita Gallé and Giorgio Upiglio at Casa Planeta
- ArsValue: Auction Record for El libro de payasos y bufones
- Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco: Grafica Uno Collection Record
- Trinity College Library, Cambridge: Wifredo Lam’s Livres d’Artiste
Editorial note: This article was prepared by the editors of GianninaBraschi.com. It is not authored by Giannina Braschi.
Last reviewed and updated: September 2, 2026.