About
Matteo is a Milan-born architect, illustrator, writer and teacher.
He is the author of several books — including Manhattan Unfurled, The City Out My Window: 63 Views on New York, Windows on the World: 50 Writers, 50 Views, and more recently of Il grande museo vivente dell’immaginazione. Guida all’esplorazione dell’architettura letteraria (The Great Living Museum of the Imagination: A Guide to the Exploration of Literary Architecture, Il Saggiatore, Milan, Italy).
His drawings have appeared in various newspapers and magazines, both in the US and in Europe — including, among others, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Observer, The Paris Review Daily and La Stampa.
In 2007, his mural Skyline of the World was installed at the new American Airlines terminal at JFK International Airport.
In 2010 he founded the Laboratory of Literary Architecture, a cross-disciplinary exploration of literature as architecture.
Books
Il grande museo vivente dell’immaginazione
Guida all’esplorazione dell’architettura letteraria
[The Great Living Museum of the Imagination: A Guide to the Exploration of Literary Architecture]
Il Saggiatore (Milan, Italy, 2022)
What you have before you is unlike any other book. It is a building, with entrances, floors, rooms, courtyards and exits, and a map for moving within it. It is a museum, among whose rooms a new approach to story making is shown. To read it is to move as if on a guided tour, to immerse oneself in visions and buildings, stories and projects, to discover an entirely new point of view from which to look at the narratives that give shape and breath to our lives.
“Almost magically … the reader can … discover the secrets behind the construction of a text (and a building).”
il Venerdì di Repubblica
“Has it ever happened to you that, right in the middle of reading a novel, you have the sudden impression that you are no longer an observer reading from the outside, but instead have been catapulted into the text, becoming a visitor of a space?”
— Matteo Pericoli (from his Prologue)
Ecco Milano
Ritratto di una città che cambia
Rizzoli Lizard (2021)
“Fisica e immateriale, fatta di inchiostro ma invisibile, ecco Milano. La città di Pericoli e la nostra, intrappolate in un istante.”
La Lettura
“Matteo Pericoli e la narrazione dei grattacieli”
La Repubblica Milano
“ECCO MILANO è solo uno delle migliaia di disegni possibili, è la Milano che vedo io e che vorrei condividere con voi, con la sua fisicità e la sua immaterialità che si mescolano negli occhi della mia mente.”
— Matteo Pericoli (dall’introduzione)
Come si possono raccontare i continui cambiamenti di una metropoli moderna? Dopo Londra e New York, Matteo Pericoli ha deciso di concentrare la sua attenzione sulla città in cui è nato, un luogo unico e mutevole. E lo fa ritraendone i luoghi simbolo: dall’eterna facciata del Duomo alla proposta di un futuro ecosostenibile nata intorno a piazza Gae Aulenti. Pericoli raffigura questi spazi su una lunga striscia di carta, ripiegata e dettagliata come una mappa del tesoro, ricca di indizi per andare alla riscoperta di posti che troppe volte diamo per scontati, ma che nascondono affascinanti segreti.
Finestre sull’altrove
60 vedute per 60 rifugiati
Il Saggiatore (2021)
Traduzione di Giulia Poerio
Prefazione di Gianni Rufini (Amnesty International Italia)
Introduzione di Colum McCann
Con uno scritto di Bill Shipsey (Fondatore di Art for Amnesty)
Finestre sull’altrove è un viaggio per parole e immagini che parte dai vissuti dei rifugiati del mondo e arriva alle radici dell’anima umana. Perché, come scrive nell’introduzione Colum McCann, «non c’è finestra più misteriosa di quella che dà sul luogo al quale non possiamo tornare».
“Adoro questi sessanta disegni. Più li guardo, più rivelano. Più rivelano, e più risuonano. Più risuonano, più desidero tornare a guardarli.”
Dalla prefazione di Colum McCann
“un toccante racconto collettivo”
Sky Arte
“… racconta, con la matita miracolosa dell’autore, … immagini di spazi, di case, di vicoli, di viali, che narrano la storia di coloro, noti, importanti, o semplici vittime delle più terribili angosce della vita, che forse non li vedranno più.”
Corriere della Sera
“Lo stile … analitico-miniaturistico … segue passo passo lo straniamento percettivo del [rifugiato], quasi rivivendo il suo sentimento allo stesso tempo smagato e propositivo. ”
Avvenire
“Queste finestre sono … occasioni, perché chi legge queste storie si trasforma con loro. ”
Specchio de La Stampa
“Sessanta finestre aperte su vite da rifugiato”
la Lettura
Finestre su New York
63 visioni della Grande Mela
Il Saggiatore (2019)
“… con Finestre su New York, [Matteo Pericoli] ci rivela … il rapporto che ciascuno di noi ha con il paesaggio urbano e l’effetto profondo che può avere sul nostro essere”
Dalla prefazione di Paul Goldberger
“Matteo Pericoli è riuscito … a esplicitare quel legame invisibile che corre fra una città e i suoi abitanti disuguali al contempo con un occhio da architetto e l’altro da scrittore”
Rivista Studio
“una boccata d’arte fresca”
il Venerdì di Repubblica
“un vero e proprio romanzo grafico”
Uozzart
63 visioni di New York. 63 sguardi dalle finestre di artisti, registi, scrittori, musicisti, filosofi , scienziati e persone comuni che Matteo Pericoli ha incontrato, per poi ritrarne gli scorci e realizzare una storia inedita della Grande Mela: il racconto della città, fatto di sensazioni e confessioni, da parte di alcuni tra i suoi personaggi più famosi.
Windows on the World
50 Writers, 50 Views
Penguin Press (2014)
Fifty of the world’s greatest writers share their views in collaboration with the artist Matteo Pericoli, expanding our own views on place, creativity, and the meaning of home.
“Matteo Pericoli gorgeously illustrates writers’ views and workspaces” – “Perfect for architecture nerds”
The Huffington Post
An “original, beautiful book … the work is precise, careful, and somehow nearly surreal … the illustrations work very much like the best fiction.”
The Boston Globe
“A beautiful, meditative book”
The Seattle Times
“rich and exacting”
Los Angeles Review of Books
“a tranquil beauty”
It’s Nice That
Pericoli began working on the original, pen and ink drawings in 1998. More than two years, fifteen hundred buildings, and nineteen bridges later, the two 37-foot-long scrolls of the East and West Sides of the Manhattan skyline were completed. In this book version, an elegant slipcase contains a 24-panel, 22-foot-long accordion fold-out, with the entire East and West Side drawings, one on each side. An essay about the drawings by architecture critic Paul Goldberger accompanies the book in a separate pamphlet.
Manhattan Unfurled
Random House (2001)
“Pericoli’s drawing is at once monumental and gentle . . . the buildings seem almost to be swaying softly in a chorus line along the Hudson.”
The New Yorker
“Pericoli has fixed a moment of the ever-shifting skyline, and done so with delicacy and authority.”
The New York Times
“The most appealing thing about this book… is the newcomer’s sense of rage at the scale and speed of the city, and the corresponding desire to try to make it his own.”
Vogue
The City Out My Window: 63 Views on New York
Simon & Schuster (2009)
We all have quintessential images of New York City ingrained in our minds—postcard shots of the Chrysler Building, the Statue of Liberty, and the Manhattan skyline. These are timeless images, yet they fail to capture what the city looks like through the eyes of its inhabitants. The City Out My Window reveals what New Yorkers see when they look out their windows. Here is the city of their day-to-day, their work lives, and their daydreams.
“… a simple idea that yields surprising results — about the nature of urban living, about the creative imaginations of those who choose to live and work in a city and, perhaps most intriguingly, about Pericoli’s own unique and slightly obsessive way of seeing.”
The Observer
“(An) amazing book.”
New York Daily News
“The Manhattan skyline has been depicted in countless ways, but never like this.”
The Wall Street Journal
“Matteo Pericoli has created an inside-out view of the vertical city.”
The New York Times
London Unfurled
Picador UK (2011)
“Many writers have attempted to navigate London…, but few have done so with as much pictorial panache as … Matteo Pericoli. … The drawings … are a delicate delight. … a rare achievement.”
Time Out London
“Remarkable.”
The Big Issue London
Two 37-foot-long drawings published as a 26-foot-long accordion-format book. Over two intense weeks spent in London in September 2009 walking a total of more than 100 km, taking over 6,300 photographs (and destroying a pair of shoes). The two drawings cover approximately 30 km along the Thames showing the city as it is seen from its north and south banks.
A 360 degree view of Manhattan as seen from its geographical center: Central Park. The original drawing, in colored pencil, oil pastel, and graphite, measures 32 feet. The book features a slipcase containing the full-color drawing (reduced to 22 feet) in an accordion fold-out format and a separate pamphlet with a journal by Matteo Pericoli about the method, philosophy and evolution of the work.
Manhattan Within
Random House (2003)
“The buildings… are drawn with architectural rigor and Steinbergian whimsy.”
The New Yorker
“An astonishing 360-degree view of the Manhattan skyline as viewed from inside Central Park.”
Booklist
World Unfurled
Chronicle Books (2008)
“Matteo Pericoli’s World Unfurled manages to pack the entire globe into a 10-foot-long foldout panorama …”
Newsday
“Pericoli is a perfect guide. He leaves people out of his drawings precisely because he knows that they will eventually walk themselves in.”
From the introductory essay by Colum McCann
Over 12 million people each year are wowed by Matteo Pericoli’s spectacular Skyline of the World mural at New York’s JFK International Airport. Pericoli has rendered that same mural in the unique accordion format of his previous best-selling book, Manhattan Unfurled. The original 397-foot drawing (the largest ever featured in an airline terminal) captures the breathtaking beauty of 415 famous buildings from 70 countries melded into a seamless skyline where the Eiffel Tower rubs shoulders with the Brooklyn Bridge. Pericoli’s art speaks to the traveler in us all and serves as a visual reminder that the world is smaller than we think. With this mural reproduced in its entirety on a 10-foot foldout book, readers will hold the world in their hands.
With an essay by Colum McCann titled “An Imagined Elsewhere: The City of Cities.”
“(Pericoli) celebrates creativity while paying homage to the Manhattan he loves.”
USA Today
“Pericoli dazzles with his style and conveys warm appreciation of that which seems ordinary.”
Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“Full of charm and energy and life…a marvelous work for children. … Just wonderful.”
Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
See the City: the Journey of Manhattan Unfurled
Knopf for Young Readers (2004)
Matteo Pericoli began his spectacular drawing of Manhattan in 1998. Manhattan Unfurled was published in October 2001 and was quickly embraced by New York City and the entire country. In this version for young people, the drawing is bound into two sections (East Side and West Side) in an unusual and eye-catching new format. Pericoli adds simple text, and hand-drawn annotations, telling young readers how he came to create his drawing (the journey includes boat rides, a motorcycle and hundreds of photographs). He also encourages kids to see—and draw—a place in a whole new way. “Draw everything,” he tells them, “and you’ll know a place as you never did before.” A wonderful tribute to Manhattan, to cities and to thinking like an artist.
“… a winner with kids”
The Londonist
London for Children
Macmillan Children’s Books (2012)
Take a fascinating, fact-filled journey through London and discover the stories and secrets of one of the largest cities in the world in this vibrant adaptation of Matteo Pericoli’s breathtaking book, London Unfurled.
The two 37-foot-long pen-and-ink drawings can be enjoyed in vibrant color, with eye-opening (and eye-watering) facts; from the battles of Roman London and the Princes in the Tower, to the Gunpowder Plot and the great Victorian stink!
“Scrupulously detailed … At this limelight moment for London, it is an ideal souvenir – a record of every bridge and riverside building in the city and a cornucopia of the kinds of did-you-know facts that are irresistible to read aloud.”
The Sunday Times
The True Story of Stellina
Knopf Books for Young Readers (2006)
This is the true story of Stellina.
Stellina, a baby finch, who found herself stranded on a busy city sidewalk in Manhattan after falling from her nest. Stellina, who waited and waited for her mother to return, while cars roared past. Stellina, who found a new home – and a family – in a surprising way.
Stellina was a bird: “Cheep.” This is her true story.
“Winsomely written and illustrated.”
The New York Times
“Small readers will be won over, and bigger ones will be enchanted.”
Booklist, Starred Review
“Poignant and thoughtful, his memoir will not fail to endear Stellina to readers of all ages.”
Publishers Weekly
Tommaso and the Missing Line
Knopf for Young Readers (2008)
What is a line?
It’s the strangest thing: a line has gone missing from Tommaso’s favorite drawing, the one he drew all by himself, the one he keeps in his pocket. Lines don’t just disappear, but Tommaso’s has—it’s simply gone. And so he sets out to look for it.
Is it there, in the curl of the cat’s tail? Or there, in the antenna of the car? Tommaso’s search continues until he remembers the one special place—and person—he must visit in order to find his line, the very one he drew.
“Pericoli demonstrates remarkable draftsmanship and a vivid eye for detail and perspective … The design is striking … the effect is eye-popping.”
Publishers Weekly
“This book is beautifully, brilliantly designed … each opening of the book is elegant, balanced and draws readers in. A gem.”
Publishers Weekly
As cidades invisíveis
by Italo Calvino, with illustrations by Matteo Pericoli
Companhia Das Letras (Brazil, 2017)
A new edition of the Italo Calvino classic, with original illustrations by Matteo Pericoli.
Finestre sul mondo: 50 scrittori, 50 vedute
EDT (2015)
A tutti è capitato di fermarsi a riflettere guardando fuori dalla nestra della propria stanza o del proprio ambiente di lavoro. Che cosa cercano i nostri occhi in quel paesaggio così consueto e in qualche modo rassicurante? Il nostro pensiero — la nostra esistenza — quanto ne sono influenzati?
“Dalla propria finestra si vede il mondo, ma come raccontarlo?”
ArTribune
“Pericoli si avventura in uno strano viaggio conoscitivo, giocando di sponda o di rimpiattino, con un modo personale e originale di ‘fare inchiesta’”
Lo Straniero
“il tratto è allo stesso tempo dettagliatissimo e un filo tremulo, come per ricostruire i meccanismi dell’attenzione”
IL magazine – Il Sole 24 Ore
“(queste) linee sono il testo con cui Matteo racconta il suo mondo: il mondo che lo circonda e di cui, come un amico sincero, ci vuol fare partecipi.”
Achille Varzi
New York e altri disegni
Quodlibet (2005)
Secondo il New Yorker i disegni di Matteo Pericoli hanno saputo far vedere New York ai suoi abitanti quasi fosse la prima volta. Questo è il dono che spesso hanno i forestieri, coloro che in una nuova città ne colgono i tratti essenziali per necessità di orientamento.
Matteo Pericoli si orienta appunto nella sua città d’adozione disegnandola, per intero o per parti. Ma se pensare significa collocarsi si potrebbe allora dire che Pericoli pensa disegnando. Ed è questo il filo rosso che lega tra loro gli altri disegni nati dall’occasionale collaborazione con la stampa e non per caso fra questi prevalgono le raffigurazioni di città a lui care per ragioni personali, siano esse Ascoli Piceno o Gerusalemme. Indistintamente.
Con testi di Achille Varzi, Gilberto Rossini, Matteo Pericoli.
Un anno alla finestra: 53 viste su Torino
Allemandi & C.
Quale modo migliore di conoscere una città se non osservandola dalle sue finestre? Nel viaggio raccolto in questo volume, Matteo Pericoli ha disegnato per «La Stampa» cinquantatré viste di Torino da altrettante finestre. E Giuseppe Culicchia e Bruno Gambarotta l’hanno accompagnato. Il risultato è un racconto intimo e suggestivo di una città che vuole farsi scoprire.
