Cicona-Gualtierotti was one of the earliest two-color additive processes pioneered in Italy, in the 1930s. Attempts to introduce the process to the Italian market had some resonance in the national press of the time, but never gave rise to actual industrial development. The Cicona company and engineer Gualtiero Gualtierotti, the promoters of the system, did not have a sufficient technological and economic structure behind them to guarantee commercial success. The complexity of the system – both in shooting and projection – made it ill-suited to the standards of Italian production in the 1930s.

Gualtierotti's research was divided between color and stereoscopy. Between 1929 and 1930 he proposed, through a Milanese company called Cicona (an acronym for “Cinematografia a Colori Naturali” [Natural Color Cinematography]), an additive two-color system. Special equipment for filming and projection was built with a view to making color film tests – the first of which was demonstrated in Milan and Rome in 1931 (Anon., 1931; Cauda, 1931). Another screening was organized during the first edition of the Venice Film Festival in 1932. Following this experimental phase, the system was named after its inventor, who later continued his research in Rome, in collaboration with Ettore Catalucci's Perfecta development and printing laboratory. The system was modified so that color films, or B/W stereoscopic films, could both be made using the same equipment. In the former case the two images were used to obtain the red and green color separations; in the latter, left- and right-eye records for 3-D.

In 1935 and 1936, Gualtierotti presented three experiments in stereoscopic cinema at the Turin and Milan exhibitions of Industrial Inventions and Novelties (Mostra Nazionale invenzioni e novità industriali). Positive feedback encouraged him to found the “Società Anonima Italiana Stereocine” (SAIS) in Milan and to put into production Nozze vagabonde (Guido Brignone, 1936), which is considered one of the first full-length stereoscopic fiction films ever made. Filming, which began in January 1936, was done in two versions, one normal (flat) and one stereoscopic, both in B/W. For the stereoscopic version of the film, a special camera was used that worked with a 64mm negative. It was also planned to shoot some scenes in color, based on the apparently convincing results obtained with some cartoons (Gualtierotti, 1935; Romanus, 1936). Although some advertisements speak of a “stereoscopic film”, Nozze vagabonde was released in theaters only in a standard B/W version. Similarly, there are no reports of color sequences (Anon., 1936).

In the meantime, Gualtierotti began production on two animated short films, La macchina del tempo and La secchia rapita (1937), made in collaboration with cartoonists Carlo and Vittorio Cossio. Again, technological difficulties and high costs hindered the desired results, and it is unlikely these shorts were shown publicly. Since the choice of color ruled out stereoscopy, and vice versa, it is quite likely that these two short films were also shot in double versions, one stereoscopic in B/W and one in color 2-D. According to an account by Remo Branca, Gualtierotti's system was later used to produce two additional animated shorts, Chichibio (1943) and Beppe Padella, directed by Florentine architect Piero Crisolini Malatesta (Branca, 1943: p. 190; Giachetti, 1944). The former obtained a censorship visa in July 1943, while the latter remained unfinished. Other existing sources on the two films, however, make no reference to the use of color.

The last available information concerns a private screening of a film made in 1940, titled La grazia, which was again presented in a private screening to film executives in Venice, which had become the capital of Fascist cinematography during the brief interlude of the Italian Social Republic (September 1943–April 1945) (Anon., 1940; Anon., 1944).