Trophy for the Gran Premio del Made in Italy e dell’Emilia Romagna 2021 by Alice Ronchi

Pirelli HangarBicocca has collaborated with Pirelli to create the trophy for the Formula 1 Pirelli Gran Premio del Made in Italy e dell’Emilia Romagna 2021, by entrusting its concept and implementation to the artist Alice Ronchi. Enjoy the making of the project and the interview with Alice Ronchi through our “Bubbles”!

For her project, the artist was invited to take inspiration from the key-concepts featuring the motorsport world, such as power, suspense and speed. Alice Ronchi chose therefore to summarize these aspects into the shape of a lightning bolt, as soft in the forms as capable of conveying an idea of dynamism and strength.
The artist started her research by studying the beauty of the racecars in the ‘50s, whose aerodynamic and stretched shapes became her first point of reflection. Her goal was to work on their elegance and simplicity of forms, however, she soon turned her research towards a symbol that could express and encompass all manifestations of strength and power. Alice Ronchi therefore focused on the iconography of the lightning bolt, drawing narrative inspiration from the classical depiction of the god Zeus gripping it. Working on both shapes and symbolism, the artist imagined the moment, once the race is over, when the pilot steps on the podium and raises the trophy, expressing in this gesture his victory. Through a synthesis of the key-references of the Gran Premio and the mythological implication conveyed by the bolt, Alice Ronchi offered a narrative and expressive interpretation of the racing world and its main characters.
Created using a fusion of aluminum and mirror polished, the trophies have gone through several stages of production including the digital modeling and development of the project, followed by the 3D printing in 1:1 scale; ultimately, the production moved to the artistic foundry that carried out the merging with the use of lost-wax casting.
Alice Ronchi, 1989, is an artist who lives and works in Milan. She graduated in 2012 from the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti di Milano and in 2015 from the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. In her works, everyday objects meet the world of inventiveness and imagination. The search for a sense of wonder is a constant theme in her work, which is inhabited by familiar and yet also enigmatic figures that emerge from her own abstract reformulations. Midway between playfulness and minimalism, her work is a perfect combination of disciplined form and simplicity of expression. Using a variety of media, ranging from sculpture to photography, through to performance and video, Alice Ronchi questions reality with her watchful, inquisitive eyes, conveying her magical vision to us.