Artist Sketchbooks: Intimate Creative Processes Revealed

The article explores the significance of artist sketchbooks as intimate creative tools, featuring several case studies. Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle's 19th-century notebooks, held at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice, document Italian and European art with pen and pencil sketches. Contemporary artist Andrea Lelario created a Moleskine sketchbook from 2010 to 2019 containing 416 drawings; the Gabinetto delle Stampe e Disegni of the Uffizi in Florence plans to acquire and exhibit it. Edoardo Fontana, a xylographer, uses travel sketchbooks for his works, with an upcoming 2020 solo show at Museo dell'Opera di Guido Calori in San Gemini. Agostino Arrivabene's rarely exhibited sketchbooks contain miniature studies for his symbolist paintings, often annotated with texts and 'mysteries' of numerical proportions. The Moleskine brand has collected about a thousand artist sketchbooks since 2006, including those from its AtWork educational project, now in its 18th edition in 2019. In the US, curator Dina Brodsky organized 'Sketchbook Vol. 1' at Sugarlift Gallery in Long Island in 2019, featuring 14 artists' sketchbooks sponsored by Moleskine.