The exhibition “Deutschland-Italien: Ein Klassiker” or “Germany-Italy: a classic” opened on Wednesday 8 May in Stuttgart, in the exhibition hall of the Town Hall. The exhibition, planned as part of a series of events organized by the network of Italian Cultural Institutes in Germany with the coordination of the Embassy on the occasion of the European Football Championships, is a project of the Modena collective Mo’ Better Football with the Institute Italian of Culture together with Gianni Bellini – the most important collector of football stickers in the world – and in collaboration with the Panini company. The intent is to retrace the history of the European Football Championships through stickers, narrative and graphics.
The inaugural event was well attended: many visitors crowded the room showing great enthusiasm. The evening was opened by speeches by the deputy mayor of Stuttgart Clemens Maier, by the director of the Italian Cultural Institute Giuseppe Restuccia and by the manager of Panini Germany Alexander Bubenheimer. Among the participants there were also numerous institutional and cultural representatives of the German city.
The exhibition consists of around 20 panels, a few dozen original albums and a series of drawings created for the occasion by the artist Simone Ferrarini. Conceived as a true visual and narrative story that mixes stickers, albums, cards and material that has become cult, illustrations and graphic material, the exhibition can be visited from today to 30 August at the Italian Cultural Institutes in Stuttgart (from 8 to 31 May), Hamburg (from 12 June to 30 August) and finally Munich (from 13 June to 15 July) with three different setups, enriched by sections dedicated to the club teams of the respective cities, from Hamburg SV to Sankt Pauli, from Bayern Munich to 1860 Munich, up to Stuttgart.
“We are happy to see how the work of these months has produced an excellent result, several exponents of the Stuttgart cultural scene have been impressed by what Mo’ Better Football is doing through football and this can only fill us with pride – the comment by Marco Ferrero, soul of the Modena collective -. The working group is developing well, the diversity of skills that compose us is working even better than expected and we already have projects started for other cities abroad, scheduled for next year. Then there is the collaboration with Panini, very important for us, which is proving to be more solid than we could have imagined and which gives us hope for the future too”, his conclusion.
In the days preceding the inauguration, the calendar of events and initiatives accompanying the exhibition also began. And others will come, like the talk scheduled for July 2nd in Stuttgart.
