FMR returns to the Franco Maria Ricci publishing house and is reborn

The Franco Maria Ricci publishing house has bought back the FMR brand, synonymous all over the world with quality publishing and made in Italy elegance and the title of an art magazine that made history.

It was the dream of Franco Maria Ricci, great publisher and graphic designer, who died on 10 September 2020, to recover three letters of the alphabet he had lost: his initials FMR.

And now "FMR will be reborn, both as a publishing house and as a magazine" announces Laura Casalis, Ricci's wife.

With that brand Ricci had baptized hundreds of wonderful books and the most beautiful and widespread among art magazines;

but at a certain point, to realize another dream - the construction of the Masone Labyrinth, the largest in the world in bamboo hedges and home to his art collection - he had sold it.

Sometimes dreams come true when the dreamer is gone: on 29 December 2020, after a long and delicate operation conducted by Paolo Capretti, who has always assisted him in administrative and financial matters, the notarial deed was signed which sanctioned the return of the brand to its creator's home.

Among Ricci's papers this note was found: "Like the Phoenix bird or the rose that Paracelsus made bloom from its ashes, even my magazine, FMR, is reborn: eadem sed non eadem, the same but not the same, as the Latins of La Fenice used to say. Thirteen years ago it passed into other hands, then into others. I remember that in the last issue edited by me I signed the farewell to the readers with a rose with broken petals. Since then I have built a gigantic Labyrinth that is also a place of wonders, but I feel that, without that rose, something is missing. This is why I try to repeat the strange miracle of Paracelsus: the resurrection of a flower, of its perfume ".

"He thought about it every day. That dream is part of the legacy he left me and I feel it like a clause establishing an obligation," he says.

"I will be joined in the research by Edoardo Pepino, who today directs the Labirinto della Masone and a young team that will get to work led by some historical collaborators and friends of the publishing house. New books are being prepared and above all the FMR Number Zero to his second avatar and, who knows, also the recovery of some of the most beautiful and famous volumes signed by Franco Maria Ricci "he announces.