This is the one sheet in the series that names its own year. «Settanta vittorie» — seventy victories — won, the copy says, in the most important national and international races «dell’anno XVI»: year sixteen of the fascist era, which is 1938. Everything else on the page is built around that boast.
Down the left side, five factory photographs are stacked inside a jagged stylised wing — machine shops, assembly lines, engines on benches. A comet-tailed star cuts the upper right; below it, a real photograph of a racer, number 48, crests a drawn hill with the phrase «autarchia nello sport» floating beside him. The right-hand column does the accounting: Gilera, «the Italian motorcycle exported to all the world»; seventy victories in year XVI by Moto Gilera on Pirelli tyres; and four Italian titles listed by name — the marque championship in the 500 class, the riders’ championship of the first category with Aldrighetti, the second category with Masserini Massimo, and the off-road title with Villa Ettore. At the foot: FABBRICA ITALIANA MOTOCICLI GILERA — ARCORE — MILANO.
Arcore’s racing works
Gilera had been building motorcycles at Arcore since Giuseppe Gilera founded the firm in 1909, and by the late 1930s its racing department was the core of its reputation — these were the years of the supercharged four-cylinder 500 that made the marque a byword for speed. The sheet’s argument is the classic one of racing advertising, sharpened to the autarky register: victories at home and abroad as proof of the national industry, down to the tyres, which get their own line — Gomme Pirelli, one Italian company vouching for another.
The rider in the list
The first name in the titles column carries a weight the sheet could not know. Giordano Aldrighetti, born in Milan in 1905, champion rider of the 500 class named here, moved on to cars with Alfa Romeo — and died at Pescara on 12 August 1939, months after this campaign, of injuries from a racing accident. The page that lists his championship is, in hindsight, close to a memorial. In the lower left corner sits the small circular agency monogram with «MILANO» beneath it, common to the whole series and read by the collector as the mark of the concessionaire IGAP; the scan does not allow the reading to be confirmed, and the sheet is published without an attribution — but, thanks to its own copy, not without a date: 1938.
About this image. The work is still protected by copyright: under Italian law (L. 633/1941) rights run for 70 years from the death of the author. Since the author has not been identified, that term cannot be considered expired, and the image is treated as fully protected. It is reproduced here for documentation, study and critical purposes only, under Art. 70 of L. 633/1941 and the fair-use provision of 17 U.S.C. §107. The scan was made by the collector from his own copy of the sheet, part of the period material he keeps in a private archive: owning the physical sheet is not the same as holding the rights to the work. The image is not offered for sale, no reproduction rights are granted, and any request concerning the work should be addressed to the rights holders. Cultural Heritage Online publishes this material to document it, with no celebratory intent; see our terms and the DMCA contact published there.
Sources
- Gilera — foundation in 1909 by Giuseppe Gilera, the Arcore works
- Giordano Aldrighetti — Milan 1905 – Pescara, 12 August 1939
- The sheet itself, for the year XVI, the seventy victories, the four titles and the riders’ names.
