Completely stopped for the inauguration of Stop

The popsicles distributed by the staff of the association were not enough to refresh the public who attended the inauguration of STOP – International exhibition of contemporary illustrators, who patiently waited motionless for the beginning of the ceremony, which began – we apologize – with a little ‘ late… The preparations were frenetic and organizing the new international exhibition less than three months after the closure of the previous one was almost a mystical experience.

But let’s get to the summary of the day. The appearance of a zealous traffic policeman raised fears that fines had rained down on those who had parked in the surrounding areas, instead it was only Fabio Toninelli, delegate from the Tapirulan association, in charge of delivering prizes and merits (and in this regard we thank the body of the Local Police of Cremona for the kind loan of the uniform).

After the honors of the councilor of the Municipality of Cremona Barbara Manfredini, here is the first and very important guest: Adelchi Galloni. Protagonist of his large and rich personal exhibition, “La via del Segno”, Galloni was also president of the jury of the seventeenth edition of the Tapirulan illustration competition, of which we were preparing to reveal the winners.

I discourage all women from marrying someone who does my job, it’s better to marry a traffic policeman because when he gets home his job is done, he’s not thinking about that BMW coming from the right…
Adelchi Galloni

Galloni’s exhibition is a collection of around 200 works, partly from his personal archive, partly – as regards the initial stages of his career at Gamma Film – from Musil of Brescia, and partly from private collectors. We had the pleasure of welcoming Santo Alligo and Pietro Alligo who made their collections available.

Before the award ceremony, there was also talk of the other two exhibitions set up in the room: Stop, the war by Tania Yakunova, winner of the last edition of the competition who unfortunately, due to the war that hit her country, was unable to be present; Stop by Mario De Donà, better known as Eronda, an artist from Belluno who in the 1960s dedicated a series of his works to the word “stop”, kindly lent by the fund managed by his son Marco De Donà.

But here we are at the climax. After presenting all the 52 selected illustrators, after welcoming the very welcome visits of Sara Chissalé and Stefano Cendron (Treviso Comic Book Festival) and Flavio Rosati (Association Autori di Immagini) we moved on to the award ceremony. The Popular Prize, the result of online voting, was awarded to Antonio Bonanno with the work “Letture profunde”, which overcame the fierce competition of Ilaria Perversi (second place) and Luigi ritrovato (third place).

It’s time to say who won, gentlemen and gentlemen, you were still and attentive for almost an hour and a half, you suffered from the heat, endless preambles, greetings, thanks, fine, but who won the seventeenth edition of the illustration of Tapirulan, STOP theme, first prize 2500 euros? The winner is Simone Rea!

This time we can’t even say we’ll see each other next year because if all goes well (but usually it doesn’t go well…) the next exhibition should be in December 2022, in this way we would be able to catch up with the time lost in due to the pandemic that forced the postponement of Utopia (remember that it can be visited in Genoa until 2 July) and consequently STOP. The exhibition can be visited until 2 July 2022. And with this beautiful group photo we stop.