When people say to me, “You’re too vulgar,” I laugh. The greatest vulgarity in life is not having a sense of humor.
Posters
Collected with great care and passion, the posters are one of the most intriguing sections for tennis enthusiasts: there are over three hundred tournament and event posters, advertising posters, caricatures, illustrations, and iconographic materials prepared for the drafting of 500 Years of Tennis. The collection features many posters from Grand Slam tournaments (Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon, and US Open), as well as the poster commemorating Italy’s historic victory in the 1976 Davis Cup, won in Santiago against the Chilean hosts by Adriano Panatta, Corrado Barazzutti, Antonio Zugarelli, and Paolo Bertolucci.
Photographs
The photographic collection preserved in the Clerici Fund is nothing short of exceptional: over 1,700 photographs document moments in life ranging from 1948, when the 18-year-old Clerici played on courts across Europe alongside his peers Fausto Gardini and Umberto Bergamo, to the 1970s, with matches between rising star Adriano Panatta and veteran Nicola Pietrangeli. It’s not just tennis: there are also splendid snapshots depicting Clerici’s travel destinations, from the monumental Egypt of Luxor and Abu Simbel, to Australia Felix, described in one of his novels, to enchanting Thailand, described in a report for the columns of Il Giorno.
