Carte Noire
Carte Noire documents the intense publishing work by Noire Edition: refined artist books, drawings and manifold prints. A spectrum of artists including great names of Arte Povera, Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Mario Merz, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, Gilberto Zorio and also of well known representatives of contemporary international art such Hamish Fulton, Richard Long, Sol LeWitt, Maurizio Nannucci, Shirin Neshat, Richard Nonas, Jonathan Monk, David Tremlett.
The book title refers to the Carte Noire edition which the artist Giulio Paolini dedicated to Marco Noire, and as Gabriele Detterer wrote in the introduction: “The color “black” generates strong visual contrasts; and, in a figurative sense, the variety of manifold editions collected in this book is “lit” by such contrasts”. Together used with the color-term “Noire”, the word “Carte” draws attention to the earliest material adopted for writing and printing: paper.
Over the years Noire has experimented with different working typologies to interpret the artists projects. Every work becomes an event. With about 395 coloured illustrations, this volume documents the development of the Art editions from the 80’s up to today.
Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König
The Verlag Gebrüder König Cologne/New York was founded in 1968 by Kaspar and Walther König and since 1981 was known as Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König. Around the same time, the Walther König bookstore was founded in Cologne and soon became one of the world’s pre-eminent addresses for art-related literature and a hotbed of intellectual exchange. With an estimated 2,500 titles, they publish mainly on modern and contemporary art, photography, architecture and aesthetic theory with a special interest in collaborating with artists for the production of artists’ books. Walther König have an extensive publishing programme, collaborating long-term with some of Europe’s most significant art museums including Kunsthaus Bregenz (KUB); Serpentine Gallery, London; Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; and MUMOK, Vienna.
Noire Edition
Among the art publishers whose consistently excellent work over the years has significantly contributed to this field are Marco Noire and Silvia Chessa. The publishing duo has created a wide network of relationships between artists, art collectors and the public. In the late 1970s Marco Noire released his first prints by artists. He expanded his palette of production and since the mid-1980s, he has been working together with his wife, Silvia Chessa. They opened the Noire Gallery in 1984, adding an exhibition space to their printing and publishing activities. A look back to their beginnings in the late 1970s makes it clear that the magic of paper as a raw material helped kindle Noire’s love for his work in his Turin “stamperia”.
