Remembering Willy Rizzo

France – A new book pays tribute to the famous photographer and designer Willy Rizzo. During all his life, Willy Rizzo, the world famous photographer and designer spent his life building happiness, immortalizing and enhancing the world around him, actors, artists, fashion designers, friends and family with always his personal approach, this little touch that made the difference, a perfect technique and an intimacy that he was fond of. Willy was himself a star beyond the stars, he married Elsa Martinelli, played a mafia godfather in the movie Hoffa with Dany DeVito, became Walter Rizotto in the comic book Tintin, ‘Les bijoux de la Castafiore’. He started photography in 1945 at the age of eighteen, then got hired at France Dimanche to cover the first Cannes Film Festival, before becoming one of the pillars of Paris Match since its creation in 1949 and collaborating with Vogue Magazine for more that twenty years.  

Elsa Martinelli © Willy Rizzo, Painted by Charles Matton, Paris, 1969

  In 1966, while in Rome, first for his friends, he started a creation of furniture in a style that was at the same time contemporary and avant‐garde, with this elegant and timeless simplicity that he always had in his pictures as well. This book has been published in large format and features his line of important monographs of the Contrejour editions, that are from the creation studio Intensité. This amazing volume gathers the most beautiful visuals, a selection of his design work and texts from Willy Rizzo himself, bright, always right and full of humor. This publication will serve as a catalogue to the many shows, exhibitions and signatures around Willy Rizzo that will be held in Paris between September 2014 and January 2015. It will be released on 25th September 2014.