Luisa Canovi has a diploma in scenography from the Accademia di Belle Arti of Venice and a degree from the DAMS (Drama, Art and Music Studies) of Bologna with a thesis on animation film and a film on animated origami.
Nico Zardo
For thirty years she has been studying and designing objects and sculptures made of paper. She writes books, holds courses and offers consultancy to agencies and companies for the creation of origami for advertising and for scenographic installations.
WOULD BE LIKE SELLING REFRIGERATORS TO THE ESKIMOS! This is how things went. The Armani Junior fashion house had asked Luisa Canovi to dress its Florence shop window with a giant origami crane. Luisa’s work was so appreciated that ArmaniJunior decided to adopt this solution for all its shops in the world (about 30 of them!). Making a small origami stork is not so difficult: you need some ability and precision, of course. But problems may arise when it exceeds the one-meter length and its wings flap as if it were flying... For obvious organizational needs and with the proper indications, Armani invited the shop managers to make the crane installation themselves. For those having insurmountable difficulties in doing so, he would ask Luisa to intervene directly. The result: Luisa spent months and months making giant cranes for the shops in Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Prague, New York, Barcelona, Riyadh… But the most request was by the shop in Tokyo, in the Japan that is the primary source of origami! And where, traditionally, giving a crane as a present is considered a harbinger of good luck.
“WHAT IS YOUR RE LATIONSHIP WITH PAPER ?”, we asked Luisa Canovi. “It was born during an exercise at the academy where I had to create a three-dimensional structure from a piece of paper. And it was love at first sight! Iimmediately understood that this material was closest to my personal character and to my desire to create things using my hands. My interest for Japanese culture - where paper is held in great consideration since ancient times -helped me to enhance my knowledge of paper, of the many different types that exist and of the related techniques”.
Luisa Canovi dedicates particular attention to geometric origami, a paper folding technique through which she creates three-dimensional objects and non-figurative sculptures that have met with great success in several exhibitions.“I am always very perplexed,” says Luisa, “when someone asks to buy my sculptures because, since they are made of paper, people sometimes do not confer value to them: rarely do they recognize the commitment to researchand creativity that is behind their shape and their lightness”. •