A.G. Rizzoli – AMTE: "Architecture Made to Entertain"

From 1935 to 1944, Rizzoli produced a body of spectacular architectural renderings, in grand Beaux Arts style. Done in colored ink on rag paper, many of the drawings were intended as symbolic portraits of friends and family, depicting them as buildings. Five birthday tributes to his mother done during this period, (the Kathedrals), are among his most elaborate architectural portraits.

[...] After an unproductive hiatus, a new project was begun in 1958. Large sheets of architectural vellum, some divided into eight sections, were filled with poetry, prose, architectural drawings, quotations, a commemoration of an event (the burning of a church, for instance, or the death of JFK), or some combination of these. These 350 sheets comprise the A.C.E. (Amte’s Celestial Extravaganza). Rizzoli made up his own language, replete with many symbolically loaded puns, anagrams and solecisms (“earchitecturally”, for example, or “Architecture Made To Entertain” — AMTE).