During his 35 years at Pininfarina, Aldo Brovarone’s pencil gave shape to some of the most iconic cars of the 20th century. Yet when journalists asked to interview him, the Biella-born designer, who died in 2020, would respond with the same humble sense of wonder that always defined him:

“I never thought I was doing anything special, just an ordinary job that I loved deeply.”

To mark the centenary of his birth, the National Automobile Museum in Turin is dedicating an exhibition to Brovarone, opening today and running through March 7.

Its title says it all: La matita di Pininfarina —Pininfarina’s Pencil.

The exhibition features 28 drawings on display for the first time, drawn from the archives of Cesare Brovarone, Pininfarina and Alfredo Stola. It also brings the Dino Berlinetta Speciale back to Italy from Germany. The red sports prototype, with its sinuous, sharply sculpted lines, was designed by Brovarone in 1965 and helped redefine the standards of Italian automotive design at a time when Turin was setting the pace for the whole of Europe.

Born in 1926, Brovarone joined Pininfarina in 1953 after trying his luck in Argentina as an illustrator.

“He had lived through the difficult years of the war. He rarely spoke about those years,” says exhibition curator Maria Paola Stola Ariusso, “but they certainly interrupted his childhood passion for drawing.”

That passion can be seen in the school notebooks preserved in the archives. Instead of math problems, their pages are filled with hundreds of sketches of all kinds of airplanes. Credit, perhaps, also goes to Carlo Felice Trossi, a fellow Biella native and entrepreneur who launched improbable, eccentric aircraft prototypes from his private castle — and left young Aldo watching in wide-eyed amazement.

Brovarone’s debut at Pininfarina came with the Maserati Berlinetta A6GCS/53, also on display in the exhibition. In 2014, the car was named “the most beautiful Maserati ever.”

“Brovarone was an unwitting visionary,” Stola says. “Whenever he was given a project, he was capable of drawing something that anticipated a future trend.”

These were the years when the “Pininfarina style” became firmly established as part of the canon of Italian design, thanks to a group of technicians who worked with almost religious dedication to their craft between Grugliasco and Cambiano.

And the results were exceptional. Two of Brovarone’s designs are also featured in the exhibition at the Mauto: the 1976 Lancia Gamma Coupé and the 1996 Fiat Stola. His other landmark designs include the Alfa Romeo Spider Duetto and the Peugeot 504, of which more than 3.5 million were produced.

They were cars defined by a restrained, refined beauty, “because Aldo always knew how to find the perfect balance between emotion and functionality,” Stola says.

Brovarone’s time at Pininfarina ended in 1988. Before leaving, however, his pencil produced one final stroke of genius: the rectangular rear wing of the Ferrari F40, the sports coupe designed under the direction of engineer Leonardo Fioravanti.

“Even after retiring, Aldo never stopped drawing,” Stola recalls. “He kept at it until the very end, managing to preserve his joy and love of his work into old age. In his later years, he began painting cars and airplanes in watercolor and gouache, just as he had when he was a child. He never wanted to lose that extraordinary manual skill, which had always been his most precious gift.”

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