Room 7

“The relationship that Disler establishes with the visitor is a call and, at the same time, a struggle; an embrace and, at the same time, a torture. This is so true when we try to turn our eyes away to defend ourselves from such a fascinating spiral: in that it calls us and drags us into the suction. Then, slowly, seduced by a pictorial beauty that has few equals today, we begin to understand that, at the bottom of that delirium and that struggle, Disler is also tracing for us the terms of an arcane and mysterious order; that order that survives shattering and chaos; that order that, precisely through signs and colours, performs on itself the extreme and sacrificial proof of its inevitability”.
It was 1987 and Giovanni Testori, reviewing in Corriere della Sera the solo exhibition of the Swiss artist (1949-1996) at the Studio d’Arte Cannaviello in Milan, recognised him as one of the most significant voices of European painting in the 1980s.

Martin Disler (1949-1996).

Room 6

Chiara Briganti has been making her magic boxes since the 1970s and, at over ninety years of age, still assembles microcosms that summarise stories, dreams and obsessions in just a few centimetres. Each little theatre is accompanied by a quotation, which is intended to provide an opening for understanding what is represented and which, on the other hand, sometimes adds to the mystery. The different perspective planes are in fact equivalent to as many levels of reading and interpretation of the works, which are often double-sided, and into which the artist inserts materials from distant sources: stones, glass, and meticulously cut eighteenth and nineteenth-century engravings.

Chiara Briganti (Montpellier, 1921)

Staircase

Atelier dell’Errore is a laboratory conceived by Luca Santiago Mora in 2001 for the children of Child Neuropsychiatry, first for the Reggio Emilia A.U.S.L., then also for the A.O. Papa Giovanni XXIII of Bergamo.So called, because, Luca Santiago said: «At first I felt like a mistake being there, with them. Then I discovered that they almost always feel like mistakes, thanks to us “normals”: at school, on the bus, at birthday parties to which they are never invited. But even on the error you can build a wonderful working method to redeem the poetic potential of these kids, unknown to many, me first».
Atelier dell’Errore draws exclusively animals and, for the staircase of Casa Testori, has decided to choose from the Atlante di Oltre Zoologia only creatures that can fly, precisely those that do not need a staircase to ascend. Those animals that “even though they are stumbling blocks, errors to put it bluntly, leave us astonished, face upwards, with an easy stroke of the wing”.

Room 4

The engravings of Piero Pizzi Cannella, an exponent of the Scuola di San Lorenzo, can be considered as a synthesis of his artistic work, first and foremost because of the revival of the subjects typical of his expressive language, which, in the essentiality of the sign and the absence of colour, exaggerate the archetypal characteristics. They are domestic objects, taken out of context and their function and made into an icon, sometimes accompanied by a phrase or a sibylline word. Using etching and carborundum techniques, under the expert guidance of the Albicocco Art Printworks in Udine, the sign acquires greater or lesser precision and consistency, becoming as sharp as an arrowhead or turning into velvet in a chandelier or necklace.

Piero Pizzi Cannella was born in 1955 in Rocca di Papa (RM).

Room 3

“I observed the shoes of some sick people. Their soles had little wear, sometimes intact”.

Elisabetta Falanga started from the experience of illness, from living with it on a daily basis. She realised that there is a distance from the world, not only in the absence of contact with people, but also, and above all, with the ground. The artist reproduced and readapted the room of a sick person, introducing in an overbearing way what defines this isolation: the earth, which marks a new horizon and, at the same time, the absence of a horizon. A claustrophobic environment in which, once again, contact with the natural element is prevented, mediated by a cold sheet of glass.

The project was carried out as part of Mentorship, promoted by Sisal and the Art for Business association, to guide young artists in the development of their creative ideas with the support of two masters: Marco Ghezzi and Paolo Rosa, founder of Studio Azzurro, who died suddenly in August 2013.

Room 2

An ideal trajectory connected the entrance of the house with the garden. Marco Basta made this passage evident, bringing the outside in and creating a further threshold. His Gardens, designed on felt, were a sentimental mapping of places he had passed through, which, located in corners or spaces of passage, delineated a new geography. The fabric, produced by the Testori factory, was cut to measure for the doors of Casa Testori, but then readapted to those of the artist’s studio: thus becoming a passageway that does not only allow access to the next room. The contiguity with the outside world was also underlined by the use of an abandoned stone element in the garden in Novate Milanese, which became the basis for a sculpture: a vase, an oyster? In antiquity, oyster fossils were considered to be the ears of mythological beings and, in the present, they become an invitation to listen to the interior.

Marco Basta was born in1985. He lives and works in Milan.

Entrance

Marija Sevic’s neon sign on the façade of Casa Testori was originally intended to denounce the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, which has been closed since 2007. It becomes an indication of a place that wants to be an open and accessible reference point, day and night. The reference to the luminous signs of commercial activities underlines how culture can be non-elitist, available at all times and for everyone. A metaphor that sums up, and illuminates, Casa Testori’s mission.

Marija Sevic (1987)

Fifty years after Mariuccia’s death, thanks to the generosity of her family, the Mariuccia Testori Paracchi Prizeis launched to support the work of an emerging young artist.

Luca Doninelli: Do you remember how your passion for art, for literature came about?
Giovanni Testori: I had a cousin who painted. My family and my father’s brother’s family lived in the same house, in two separate but adjoining appartments. Ever since I was a child, she used to give me books and pamphlets about painters (but first she would tear up pictures that were too bold, like Venuses and things like that).This cousin was about twelve years older than me and I used to visit her every day, in the living room where she worked, and I would silently follow the stages of her work: from the first pen sketches to the charcoal drawings and from these to the final execution, when the colours splashed out of the tubes. I was amazed as much by the material as by the will to build that was in her. She did still lifes, landscapes, and even some beautiful portraits.

Entering Casa Testori, the entrance and the large staircase divided the two flats: on the left, above and below, lived the family of Edoardo and his wife Lina, parents of the writer Giovanni Testori, of Piera, Giuseppe, Marisa, Lucia and Gabriella; on the right lived Uncle Giacomo with his wife Giuseppina Rusconi and their children Angela (Angiùla), Angelo and Mariuccia, the cousin Testori talks about in this 1992 interview. Mariuccia Testori (1911-1962) devoted herself to painting and drawing at an early age, participating in a few group exhibitions at the Permanente in Milan in the 1930s; her production is restricted to a few years, between 1935 and 1942. Mariuccia, who was married to Piero Paracchi, dedicated herself to her family after the birth of her second daughter, Anna (1941). She later had three more children: Giacomo, Marta and Letizia. Testori remained grateful all his life towards his beloved cousin, who was so important for his early fascination with colour and painting, but also witnessed a total dedication to the family, so important for the history of this house, and for the writer.

The prize was won by Aleksander Velišček, download here the press release.

Special Guest

On 16 January 1972, L’Ambleto was staged at the Pier Lombardo Theatre. Not only was the curtain lifted on a new space that is still one of the most important on the Milanese scene, but it also marked the beginning of an extraordinary partnership between an author, Giovanni Testori, and an actor, Franco Parenti. There was something subversive about that pairing that burst onto the Milan scene in those years. A Catholic writer and a Communist actor broke all the moulds, opening up spaces for passionate reflection in the wounded fabric of Milan in those years.Despite the novelty and the anomaly of the text, L’Ambleto was a resounding success, marking the beginning of an extraordinary partnership. Years later, L’Ambleto was brought back on stage by another great protagonist of Italian theatre: Sandro Lombardi, directed by Federico Tiezzi. In this case too, the success was extraordinary. And now, forty years after that debut, will Filippo Timi be the third Ambleto? The Perugian actor, just back from a series of shows that have been box-office hits, has given Casa Testori a first taste, interpreting the memorable incipit of the text and his deep and unmistakable voice resounds through the rooms of the house (as did Sandro Lombardi’s for the first edition of Giorni Felici). What we all hope is that this is really a beginning. Our thanks go to Andrèe Ruth Shammah, who forty years ago directed the first Ambleto, and today has “taken Filippo Timi by the hand” in this beginning of Testori’s journey.

Filippo Timi was born in Perugia in 1974. He lives in Milan.

Room 20
Invited by Stefano Arienti

The project conceived for this room expresses a reflection on two different elements, united, however, under the same sign; one is linked to the technique of engraving, in its various procedural aspects, the other refers to the role of light in engraving itself and therefore to its perception through the weighting of different space-time dimensions. The processuality of engraving is apparently interrupted in Phos III. Although it remains in the form of a matrix, it leaves room for light, which, settling in the engraved marks, as if it were ink, brings out the represented landscape, which in turn, among the corrosions and inflorescences that time has left on the aluminium, undergoes. This is repeated in the site-specific work Abete where the engraved sign is always perceived through it. This work catapults the fir tree in the garden of Casa Testori into the room, and this is the main reason why I chose this room: the tree in question is exactly centred in the window, which is therefore perceived as the perfect framing of an element that is very similar in its architectural structure to the forms that I represent. The virtuality of this subject that is abstracted from its context introduces the metaphysical dimension of the three drawings Dark I, II and III, in which light is no longer physical but entirely mental and is expressed through the use of the black pen and therefore of ink, which stands out on the metal surface of the cards that imitate the engraving plate.

Gaia Carboni was born in Turin in 1980. She lives and works in Fidenza.