BIBLIOTECA

the Foundation ARCHIVE

The archive of the Tito Balestra Foundation to preserve the documents related to Tito and Anna Balestra, the activity carried out by the Foundation, the school workshops, and the activities of the Italian Centre for Operational Didactics. The archive includes about 20,000 documents from 1920 to today.

A plan to reorganize the archive has been developed to improve and preserve these important materials, as well as make them accessible to the public.

 

The archive of the Tito Balestra Foundation includes the following collections:

 

Tito and Anna Balestra’s Collection

Containing mementos from the 1940 until end of the nineties.

This collection includes:

  • Letters
  • Postcards
  • Manuscripts
  • Editorial drafts
  • Notes
  • Drawings
  • Audio and video recordings
  • Photographs
  • Miscellaneous

 

Tano Citeroni’s Collection

Tano Citeroni (Rome 1939 – 2003) was a photographer and a writer. He published novels that gained national recognition and was the author of photographic books published in Italian, Polish, Swiss, Japanese, Canadian and American editions. His photos are at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

This collection includes:

  • Mails
  • Manuscripts
  • Editorial drafts
  • Notes
  • Drawings
  • Audio and video recordings
  • Photographs
  • Miscellaneous

 

Silvio Ceccato and Pino Parini’s Collection

Silvio Ceccato (Montecchio Maggiore, 1914 – Milan, 1997) was an Italian philosopher and linguist. He wrote numerous essays, especially in the field of cybernetics. He was among the first in Italy to be interested in machine translation and was the founder of the Italian cybernetics operating school. He studied the mind, understood as the set of activities that an individual carries out to create meanings, memorise and express them, and proposed a model in terms of organ-function. He published 21 volumes and hundreds of essays on these subjects.

This collection includes:

  • over a hundred hours of recodings (unpublished) of Silvio Ceccato’s meetings with the members of the italian operative school (which have been rip on cd-roms and mp3s).

 

Lino and Francesca Giacomelli Gentili’s Collection

Lino Gentili (Bologna, 1925 – 1997) was not only an art teacher but also an artist. He began his teaching career in Trentino and in 1967 moved to San Lazzaro, where he remained until his retirement in 1990. After participating in various exhibitions and reviews of educational experiences, he comes into contact with Silvio Ceccato. He was author of texts and articles on art education and was as one of the greatest scholars on literature and the interpretation of visual art. Together with his wife Francesca Giacomelli Gentili (Ferrara 1926 – Bologna 2000), offered an innovative contribution to art teaching through a commitment to research and mutual collaboration. This is confirmed by their writings and the documentation of their school experience (publications, educational programmes and lessons held in refresher courses).

This collection includes:

  • Educational experience
  • Manuscripts
  • Editorial Drafts
  • Notes
  • Drawings
  • Photographs
  • Miscellaneous
 

Tito Balestra Foundation Archive (1982-2009)

This collection includes:
  • Mails
  • Audio and video recordings
  • Photographs
  • Documentation of the research carried out by the Didactic Experimental Workshops