Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts has been a vital supporter of illustration arts since its inception, with exceptional designs including Paul Davis’s Iconic Three Penny Opera poster, in 1976, to Francisco J. Nunez’s artwork for last summer’s Mostly Mozart Festival. This summer, art by Francesco Zorzi for Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival invites visitors to a diverse range of music, spoken word, family events and dance through posters, ads and kiosks. Following is Francesco’s take on life and art.

Photo courtesy of Lincoln Center from Lincoln Center Out Of Doors 2018. Photographer: Kevin Yatarola

Q: Originally from [where?] what are some of your favorite things about living and working in [your current locale]?

A: I’m from Italy, I grew up in Florence, where I studied and received my MFA in Architecture, and I’m currently living and working in the city. Even if I love the art in which we are immersed living in places with such a great history like Tuscany, and the fact that you can find traces of it almost anywhere, sometimes it’s hard not be overwhelmed, but what I love the most about being here is when I can loose myself (walking with no destination in the streets of the historical center or running up the hills that are surrounding Florence) recognizing the beauty in a more natural and everyday way, and being inspired.

Q: Do you keep a sketchbook? What is the balance between art you create on paper [or other analog medium] versus in the computer?

A: I am obsessed by sketchbooks and recently I started doing them by myself, enjoying the practice of binding, sewing, pasting etc. I use multiple sketchbooks for multiple purposes, the ones that I prefer are those I use traveling, rawly and quickly sketching people surrounding me, sometimes rawly and quickly watercoloring them too. My hand-sketches are always the starting point for any illustration and work that I create. My working process consists of hand sketch, picture of it, digital ink with pencil on iPad, final version with the computer, and I couldn’t figure out myself thinking creatively without having any sketchbook and pencil beside me.

Q: What is the most important item in your studio?

A: I can’t name only one, because there are so many, but I guess the very essential one is the trio formed by the computer, the iPad and its digital pencil, even if my crayons, pencils, books, magazines, posters and comics are important as well.

Q: How do you know when the art is finished—or when to stop working on it?

A: Basically when I am out of the sort of state of fury in which I find myself when I am deep into The crucial moment of working to reach out the end of the digital work. The central steps of the process, working on creating the structure, for me are slower than the one in which the illustration completely reveals itself and in which I speed up the passages, aimed to complete it to see the final result, as if it was a work done by someone else. So when I start slowing down again, usually means that I am satisfied with it, I can see the real illustration, and I am particularly happy when that illustration I'm looking at is better than the one I imagined at the beginning of the process.

Q: What was your favorite book as a child?

A: I was in love with the Richard Scarry series, I learned to read with his Storybook Dictionaryand I guess that even my love for illustration began with him. Another collection of illustrated books that has been essential to me is the children’s book series by Attilio & Karen: basic and geometrical elements combined to create an entire world of animals, with unreal colors. New books illustrated by Attilio Cassinelli (born 1923!) are now being published in Italy by Lapis Edizioni, after a long period in which his work had disappeared. 

Q: What is the best book you’ve recently read?

A: Actually it has been a re-reading: a novel by Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees. An out of time story, a guy climbing up a tree and deciding never to come down again, a book with multiple reading layers, written fifty years ago and still fresh and significant as it was written today. 

Q: If you had to choose one medium to work in for an entire year, eliminating all others, what medium would you choose?

A: Watercolors, I love the physical act of using them with brush on paper and explore the possibilities given by the ever-changing density of colors  

Q: What elements of daily life exert the most influence on your work practice?

A: Running out in the nature, cycling, listening to music, reading, loving.

Q: What was the [Thunderbolt] painting or drawing or film or otherwise that most affected your approach to art? 

A: To me has been a sort of shock discovering when I was around seventeen the drawings of one of the greatest italian artists of our modern times, Andrea Pazienza (recently published in the US by Fantagraphics), a revolutionary cartoonist. Even if he died at an insulting young age, the amount of his works is impressive, and he inspired artists in many other media, including literature thanks to his creative use of the language. In the same story he was able to switch his graphic style from realism to humoristic, recalling the worlds of Carl Barks and Moebius at the same time. From him I learned that it's the quality you put in what you are doing that pays back. 

Q: What was the strangest/most interesting assignment you've taken that has an important impact on your practice, and what changed through the process?

A:  The works that I am doing for Hemispheres Magazine with the Art Direction of Rickard Westin Info are really pushing me on, as I improved by working with clear ideas and working in a very fast way. Usually they are multiple illustrations, not exactly infographics but a sort of, and I love when I'm able to find out a way to collect them together in a meaningful way. One of my favorite ones so far is a series for an article about six events in the US for the recent total eclipse of the sun. The way I designed them, with an inner action and movement, pushed me to share the work with a friend of mine, an animator, to create a short animated movie out of it. Below: llustration for the august 2017 issue of Hemispheres Magazine

Q: What would be your last supper?

A: Something very Tuscan, a Ribollita and a glass of red wine with a Latte alla portoghese as a dessert.

Francesco Zorzi is an italian illustrator and visual designer based in Florence, Italy. He featured in international annuals as well as in magazines, newspapers and campaigns around the world for clients including Hemispheres Magazine, The New York Observer, The Boston Globe, Penguin Random House.Lately he designed the illustration series for the 2018 edition of Lincoln Center Out Of Doors festival, in New York. He is represented in the US and Canada by Purple Rain Illustrators.
Website:www.francescozorzi.it  
Facebook:www.facebook.com/frazorzi
Instagram: www.instagram.com/fra_z
Shop: www.juniqe.com/francesco-zorzi