Gian Piero Motti

(1946 - 1983)

Gian Piero Motti, known as Giampiero (Turin, August 6, 1946 – Monastero di Lanzo, June 22, 1983), was an Italian mountaineer and writer. In the early 1970s, a protest movement emerged within the alpine community between Turin and the Val d'Orco. Its leader was Gian Piero Motti, a brilliant and cultured mountaineer, member of the Italian Alpine Club (CAI), mountaineering instructor, and the first person to solo the Gervasutti Pillar of Mont Blanc du Tacul. A young man attuned to the creative energy emanating from France and the United States, Motti became the symbol of a new generation of mountaineers determined to break with the myth of heroic mountaineering still prevalent in Piedmont. They rejected the cult of the summit and the symbolism of sacrifice that accompanies it, as well as the image of the invincible mountaineer who, in everyday life, often conceals fragility and dissatisfaction. He died by suicide on the night of June 21-22, 1983, at the age of 36.