“Landscape is the huge face of a sleeping giant.”
Tullio Pericoli is one of the most significant artists of the Italian twentieth century and a leading figure in the cultural life of our country. In this biography, writer Silvia Ballestra returns his figure to us vividly and in the round.

Leaving Colli del Tronto, Tullio Pericoli arrived in Milan in 1961 “to be an artist.” He already has a few collaborations under his belt and several admirers who encourage him (first among them Cesare Zavattini), but he is to all intents and purposes a provincial in the city of the economic boom. Milan is the capital of publishing, newspapers, and the cultural industry, and Pericoli immediately comes into contact with journalists, writers, artists, editors, and critics. He draws for “Il Giorno,” illustrates stories by famous writers publishing for that new and lively newspaper, and immediately exhibits his paintings in important Milanese galleries. Curious, ironic, highly talented, he fits into the intellectual life that was fruitfully reborn after the brutality of the war. He measures himself with different languages. He begins a lifelong dialogue with books and writers, never forgetting painting. Through the account of his many important encounters - his friend Emanuele Pirella, Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino, Lucio Mastronardi, Giorgio Bocca, Oreste Del Buono, Dario Fo, to name but a few -, literary suggestions, re-enactments, magic tables and portraits that have become famous throughout the world, Silvia Ballestra traces Tullio Pericoli's extraordinary life in an intellectual context of unrepeatable richness and variety.