Lora Lamm: Between Swiss and Italian graphic design.

Lora Lamm (1928), born and trained in Switzerland, was for a long time the sole female presence in the literature on Italian graphic design. Lora’s critical and historical fortune is peculiar. Although much of her professional career took place in Zürich, she is remembered almost exclusively for the ten years that she spent in Milan, from 1953 to 1963. In 2013, an important exhibition dedicated to her by the MAX Museum in Chiasso inaugurated a major rediscovery and recognition of her graphic design work. The years of Lora’s stay in Milan coincided with the period between the first Italian industrial takeover and the alleged ‘economic miracle’ in Italy. Milan enjoyed a moment of great economic and cultural vitality and was about to become the core of a vibrant and internationally renowned design scene. The city, with its geographical position open towards Europe, became a center of attraction for designers coming not only from other parts of Italy but also from neighboring countries such as Switzerland. Many among them were women, who faced challenges in finding space, except for the opportunities provided by a few companies like the department store La Rinascente, geared toward a female clientele. The arrival of Swiss designers in Italy, along the Zurich-Milan axis, has often been seen in terms of a successful marriage between a kind of functional and calculated Swiss prose and a spontaneous Italian poetic vein. Nevertheless, as we will see, the great success enjoyed by the graphic design work produced by Lora Lamm between 1953 and 1963 is only partially attributable to her ability to blend the rigorous training she received in her native country and the stimuli she found in a vital and effervescent context in the city of Milan.