Sport in cuttings / 1913–1963

Before Panini sticker albums were introduced in the early 1960s, children commonly cut images out of periodicals and pasted them into homemade albums: exercise books, discarded ledgers or reused magazines. As well as keeping them occupied with scissors and glue, this activity had an educational purpose: it taught them to organise and pursue a project over time, while allowing them to give their passions a tangible, manageable form.

The collected images offer a rich and varied picture of how sport was portrayed in the press between 1913 and 1963, much of which has now disappeared: from illustrated magazines printed in green or purple to titles such as Genoa’s Vedetta dello Sport, Fotosport, Il Calcio Illustrato and SportItalia, SISAL’s official publication. Caricatures, group photographs, whole pages, controversies and portraits were cut out and placed together freely, guided more by the young collector’s passion than by strict organisation. The results are spontaneous and surprising compositions, rarely devoted to a single team.