1952 – At the table in the post war period

The dynamic commercial and communication activity started by Pietro Barilla, who was by this time decisively oriented to the needs of the “market”, had been abruptly interrupted by an event of unforeseen proportions: on June 10, 1940, Italy entered World War II.
For Pietro, the terrible days of winter and of combat on the Russian front would follow.
But the storm would in time pass, and with the slow return to normal life, the national reconstruction of a country devastated by bombing began anew. The climate of that particular historical moment stimulated Pietro Barilla to resume his work with the enthusiasm of the past: the poster with an image of a flying balloon designed by Giuseppe Venturini is dated 1949, and represents in a symbolic form the will to fly high, to forget the tragedies of the war and to restart the projects that had been in the works at the end of the 1930s.
The publishing of calendars, which were such a precious tool in the dynamics of communication of the prewar period, was resumed as well.

In 1952 Erberto Carboni inaugurated the series of hard cardboard advertising boards named “Famous Banquets”, carefully lithographed by Amilcare Pizzi of Milan, and intended to be used as supports for the blocks of daily pages, and the images were “taken from the masterpieces of pictorial art of all times”.

Though, the transformation of the distribution chain and the introduction in predominant measure of product packaging drastically changed the means of company communication, leading to discontinue the glorious calendar starting from the mid 1950s.

However, the calendar was resurrected from its own ashes in the recent years of the 1990s, and it was not intended for our national territory, but for the vast and complex international market, an the reprints of prewar calendars and advertising announcements was used as a warrant for the long standing history of a Company “engaged in making pasta since 1877”.

Erberto Carboni, Famous Banquets – The Wedding Feast in Canan by Paolo Veronese. 1952 Barilla Calendar.

Wall calendar with disposable daily pages. Milan, Amilcare Pizzi, 1951. ASB, Rla 20.