40 years after Law 180. A tribute to Franco Basaglia Curated by Davide Dall’Ombra and Fabio Francione Casa Testori 20 May – 1 July 2018
On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of one of Italy’s most famous laws, the Law “180” of 13 May 1978, also known as the “Basaglia Law” after its creator, Casa Testori paid tribute to FrancoBasaglia, the first person in Italy to decide, with a contradictory gesture imbued with civic sense and intellectual passion, to tear down the gates and open the doors of asylums. Casa Testori, giving voice to the important anniversary in an unprecedented and transversal way, intended to pay homage to both the law and its promoter by setting up an exhibition that, only in appearance, may seem distant from the epicentre of the political-institutional battle of the time, but which in reality seeks, through the double confrontation between Gillo Dorfles and GiovanniTestori, to understand Basagli’s thought and the reasons that moved him to undertake one of the greatest revolutions of the twentieth century. In this sense, Dorfles – Testori. Matti. 40 years after Law 180. A tribute to Franco Basaglia, curated by Fabio Francione and Davide Dall’Ombra, short circuits Franco Basaglia’s generous utopias using the life and art experiences of both Gillo Dorfles and Giovanni Testori, who, about forty years apart, turned their attention to madness, painting men and women who had been rendered vulnerable and suffering by mental illness. Dorfles, during the years of his specialisation in psychiatry at the end of the 1930s, drew and sketched mental illness after being directly fascinated by the inhabitants of asylums. Testori, following the loss of his mother, to whom he was deeply attached, in 1977, renewed his understanding of theatre and painted the Matterelle, influenced by Gericault, the Nuovi Selvaggi and Varlin. Dorfles and Testori, two artists who were in their own way “irregular” (or interdisciplinary), were able to explore before others the need to extend to everyone the right to live a dignified and fully understood life in society.
The exhibition was completed by a selection of articles on the relationship between art and madness published by Gillo Dorfles in Corriere della Sera between 1975 and 2013 and by a survey of the books published by Franco Basaglia (from Cos’è la psichiatria to L’istituzione negata, Morire di classe, Crimini di pace and all the major books).
Jannis Kounellis Casa Testori 21 September – 10 November 2019
KOUNELLIS AT CASA TESTORI Giuseppe Frangi
It is a great emotion to welcome into the rooms of Casa Testori this cycle of engravings by Jannis Kounellis, almost a solemn farewell hymn by one of the greatest masters of our time. The 12 engravings, on two metres by one metre slabs, that compose the series were made in 2014 in the artist’s studio in Umbertide, where Corrado and Gianluca Albicocco, owners of one of Italy’s most prestigious art print shops, had “moved” their workshop there for the occasion […].
The engravings have a unique subject: the coat. They were made using the carborundum technique on zinc plates. Carborundum is an uncommon chalcographic technique that does not require acid biting or cutting tools to engrave the metal surface. Instead, an epoxy resin combined with silicon powder, sand or iron filings is used, an amalgam that, when dried, turns into a very hard and resistant ceramic material: a material capable of retaining a large part of the oily mixture of the ink and thus transferring the shapes onto the surface of the paper with the pressure of the press. The final effect, clearly visible in these works by Kounellis, is one of intense and dramatic granularity, of a materiality that deflagrates on the white surface of the paper support. As Roberto Budassi wrote in the volume dedicated to the cycle of engravings (a+mbookstore editions): “Kounellis consciously chooses the chalcographic technique of carborundum because this allows him to act on the work without the mediation of any instrument, of any other artifice that is not of a physical nature, of an instrument that is different from his own hands, from that workforce necessary for the genesis of the work itself, to its becoming an object and a testimony through the action generated by the creative force”.
Testimony is the key word that encapsulates the value of this cycle by the Greek master: on the paper we find prints that physically condense not only the coat-object, but the experience with which that object is charged, of which it is the bearer. They are “sindonic” images, which in their fragmentation, in their appearance and at the same time tearing, become almost tactile, as well as visible, evidence of the pain of a historical period. A testimony that in the dilation of the measures and the freedom with which it occupies the white space, takes on an ascending and “glorious” dimension. A dimension that would certainly not have escaped Giovanni Testori. The challenge of this exhibition is to try to weave a posthumous dialogue between two great protagonists who in different ways left a deep mark on Italian culture and life in the second half of the 20th century. A dialogue that takes place between images and words. […]
The Coats are one of the last works by the master of arte povera: 12 carborundum engravings made with the collaboration of the Albicocco Art Printworks in Udine. After being exhibited in Rome in 2017 at Palazzo Poli, home of the Central Institute for Graphics, and in Paris at the Lelong Gallery, the complete series of engravings arrived at Casa Testori in a posthumous dialogue with the verses by Giovanni Testori, which accompanied the works. An encounter that never happened and that was thus proposed, in the conviction that these “sindonic” images by Kounellis would certainly have fascinated Testori.
Daniele Gaggianesi Casa Testori 24 May – 18 June 2021
Interni Vicini is a participatory poetry project by Daniele Gaggianesi, realised in collaboration with Associazione Giovanni Testori in the sphere of NovateCULT – la cultura è per tutti and promoted by Cooperativa Koinè thanks to the contribution of Fondazione Cariplo.
The idea for Interni Vicini came from the desire to recount moments of life that characterised the pandemic. The virus has attempted to wipe out a couple of generations, those of our elders, custodians of the memory of our recent past. And not only the virus, but with the lockdown, anonymity itself has become contagious and widespread, to the point that all of us, infected or not, shut away in our flats, have experienced it: we have been one of the many faces looking out of one of the many windows, watching the usual deserted street, eyes peering behind a mask, no longer with a history, a profession, a life that has marked our faces. Eyes barred behind the white. And yet, life, the memory of us, lurks somewhere, probably behind and inside our objects, those usual things that remain on our shelves, on our bedside tables, sinks.
The idea was to entrust Daniele Gaggianesi, a poet and actor, with the task of writing a great poem about small things full of life, taking his cue from some photographs sent to him by ten people over 60 from Novate. Each of these people was interviewed at length by the artist, an opportunity to talk about themselves while maintaining total anonymity. The result of Gaggianesi’s action was an exhibition on the first floor of the House, where the photographs taken by the elderly were displayed together with poems written by the artist and background music by Chiara Ryan Izzo.
On 28 May, Gaggianesi enriched his project with a performance at Casa Testori. The poet, accompanied by the projection of photographs on the facade of the House and the soundscape by Chiara Ryan Izzo, read his texts live to the public.
The project also included an Instagram and Facebook campaign on the dedicated @internivicini page.
A project by Casa Tesori Curated by Davide Dall’Ombra, Luca Fiore, Giuseppe Frangi e Francesca Radaelli Meeting di Rimini 20-26 August 2017
AENEAS PASSES ON Davide Dall’Ombra
[…] Once visitors have finished seeing the closing titles of the video, they must immediately come to terms with the first of the ten works exhibited, one that is directly linked to the theme under examination and one that is able to draw upon the Virgilian metaphor. This is Julia Krahn’s 2010 diptych, Mutter und Tochter (Mother and Daughter), in which the artist is depicted with her mother in two images that complete each other in a heartrending pendant. Krahn has for several years been using photography as a means for knowing herself and her closest family members. These two photos show the beginning of this process, and the first step – after a number of works on herself, on her own ego and on her desire for maternity – could only concentrate on her mother. This diptych is a path of knowledge but also one of acceptance, the fruit of hard labour, of a struggle engaged by her affections with her mother, gathered like her own Anchises on her shoulder, in the first photo, and in a pacifying embrace in the second. The artist plays all her stakes and asks the principal and primal affection of her life to do the same. Her total nudity is the necessary expression of her acceptance of this challenge. What we see is not the fruit of a process prepared at the drawing board, but a conquest achieved actually during the pose. The fusion between art and life is total and art becomes the place in which to amass a natural process of accepting her own being as a daughter and the mortality of her mother. The actual execution of the work of art, its technical process – made of poses, timer shots, changes of film, repositioning, physical tiredness, impatience, embarrassment – produces two images that are unexpected and perfectly complimentary, destined to certify a turning point, something essential, in their relationship. It is an iconic, perfectly achieved testimony to the process of evaluation, rejection and conquest of our parents. And the fact that this Virgilian metaphor is interpreted by a woman with her mother is not a simple gender substitution, it is an important indication of how contemporary art registers the changing times and the rediscovered centrality of the female figure. It is by no chance that the exhibition itinerary necessarily passes between these two images, these Columns of Hercules that plunge us, as if from a precipice, away from metaphor and into life. They increase, by no small degree, our expectations as we approach the other works on display. These nine “cases” are in some way exemplary. They have been chosen out of many other possible ones, not least thanks to the pertinent suggestions of Francesca Radaelli. They make no claim to codify the categories to which they belong, or to synthesise the variety of imaginable approaches. The intention has been to leave the work of art, not only to relate one of the possible ways of relating with our parents, but to demonstrate the drama, breadth and inexhaustible wealth of this relationship, especially for the self. But the seven living artists, each presented in their own custom-made space, are to some extent introduced by two masters of the 20th century: Andy Warhol and Michelangelo Antonioni. These are present as a result of the numerous perceptions of Giuseppe Frangi which have marked out the progress of this exhibition. Two giants of today engaged in two homages to two giants of the past: Leonardo and Michelangelo.
The first work is The Last Supper, a painting in acrylic on serigraphy, transported to canvas in 1986, which testifies to the last cycle by the protagonist of American Pop Art, who died the following year. The cycle consisted of a large number of works of different dimensions and typologies, entirely dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. They were created for the Milan exhibition held a few months later at the Galleria del Credito Valtellinese in Palazzo delle Stelline, a few steps away from the Cenacolo. It may well be the most complex and detailed religious cycle ever created by an American artist. It is a testimony to an awareness of the iconic nature of Leonardo’s image, taken from a reproduction bought in a Korean shop not far from the Factory. But it is also a testimony to the fact that the artist’s faith was as real as it was hidden, linked as it was to his love for his mother. The great painting in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie is here cited literally and used as the matrix for his own work, revisited with the repetition and fluorescent colour typical of Andy Warhol’s language. It is a work that, in itself, is representative of a way of relating to the artist’s own masters. At the same time, it aims to grasp the iconic nature of the work that is to be reproduced, obsessively, in all its variants of number and colour. It is a hymn in praise of the surface, which Warhol had perceived to be the real field of action for a modern artist seeking depth. There is nothing irreverent here, if anything it encloses a wish: «Do you believe that the Italians are conscious of the respect I have for Leonardo? » asked Warhol of his friend Pierre Restany.
The work that the great Michelangelo Antonioni dedicated to the Tomb of Giulio II at San Pietro in Vincoli, and to Michelangelo’s celebrated Moses, placed at the centre of the complex, is a work on silence. The short film The Gaze of Michelangelo is considered the director’s testament. Created in 2004, three years before his death, it is the only work in which Antonioni appears as an actor, and he does so occupying the entire scene. The director had himself filmed as he entered the empty church. Dragging his feet, he approaches Michelangelo’s statue. Very slowly, he comes closer to it. He examines it deeply, finally allowing himself a direct contact, caressing it. A simple, intense and moving progression. What makes it heartrending is the evident struggle of the protagonist, marked by age and, above all, by the stroke that had afflicted him almost twenty years earlier, making it difficult for him to walk and talk. But his silence is not, here, the sign of a defeat forced upon him by the ravages of time, Rather, it is the real protagonist, the instrument with which he pays homage to Michelangelo. According to tradition, Michelangelo himself had been the first to experience the full dramatic nature of that silence between art and life. When he had terminated the statue, he struck it, declaring «Why don’t you speak? » Antonioni draws upon Michelangelo’s exasperation for a perfect beauty that does not translate into life, into the possibility of speech. He creates that silence, and obtains it with complex technical means, needed to obliterate the sounds of the city while maintaining those that are pertinent and significant, such as those produced by his steps along the nave or by his wedding ring against the marble surface. Thus Michelangelo’s gaze is transformed into sound. The compulsive repetition of Warhol that releases energy, and Antonioni’s caressing of a full silence. Two opposite means sound the possible starting note for the expression of a re-earned love for our parents. They provide the visitor with a final blessing before departing on this new journey into contemporary art.
On display at the 2017 Rimini Meeting: I Promessi Sposi cancellati per venticinque lettori e dieci appestati (2016) by Emilio Isgrò; Madonna (2007) by Alberto Garutti; Arcipelago (2016-2017) by Giovanni Frangi; Via Crucis (2011) by Adrian Paci; New York, November 8, 2001 (2001) by Wim Wenders; Procession (2015) by Andrea Mastrovito; Qui Ora (2011) by Gianni Dessì; Mutter und Tochter (2010) by Julia Krahn; Lo sguardo di Michelangelo (2004) by Michelangelo Antonioni; The Last Supper (1986) by Andy Warhol.
Curated by Daniele Capra and Giuseppe Frangi Casa Testori 1 December 2018 – 20 January 2019
NEVER STOP FIGHTING Daniele Capra and Giuseppe Frangi
The show Graffiare il presente(i.e. “Scratching the Present”) is inspired by the conviction that there are works of art being made today for which the deepest source of inspiration is the desire to offer tools for interpretation of the reality that surrounds us, whether critical, poetic or militant; tools for holding this reality at bay, or for acting in it, in opposition to the reassuring but sterile idea of suggesting to the viewer a place that is set apart and sheltered from the contamination of the world. In response to this need to play an active role in our times, Graffiare il presente presents works produced in the year 2018 by twenty-one artists, all Italian and all born in the seventies and eighties. These are works that are intended to serve as bricks supporting our own and others’ weight, capable of fighting to escape slipping into the indistinct oblivion that so quickly swallows everything up. These works are offered to the viewer as tools for thought, theses and theorems – both visual and ideal – capable of supporting the suggestion of utopia, the ambition of signifying and the intention of withstanding the tensions and perils of the future: the most treacherous of times, ready to dissolve our ambitions like waves breaking on the shore. The purposes of the exhibition include determining how the choice and practice of the medium of painting goes well beyond its alleged self-centredness and exclusive focus on linguistic-stylistic aspects or on an unproductive form of expressive intimism. The choice of painting is not a random one in a place that has, in its history, been the theatre of the adventure in collecting of Giovanni Testori, a passionate lover of painting. The works of particular intensity appearing in Graffiare il presente aim to demonstrate how, for an entire generation of artists, the practice of painting is inspired by a need to pursue significant intellectual goals, as an aesthetic, existential or political mission. Eschewing in every way the assertive and reconciling repetition of one’s own identity, the reassuring and inconclusive practice of art as decoration or as concise commentary on the world, the exhibition represents an anarchic attempt to reveal the most significant attempts to resist and not dissolve in the rapid banality of contemporary life. As curators of the project, we wish to underline the artists’ conviction and generosity in responding to our invitation, confirmed by the quality of the works, the frequently expressed desire to submit particularly large artworks for the exhibition, and the artists’ active participation in the process of conception and public discussion. This can only be a signal of the extent to which the medium of painting is experienced as an idiom abounding in as-yet unexpressed potential, the significance of which is frequently ignored in our country’s official exhibition halls. This perception is supported by the experimental, often bold, but always methodologically rigorous force characterising many of the works on exhibit. After all, experimentalism is also the practically obligatory result of the pronounced tendency toward questioning that characterises the artists featured in the exhibition, and their strongly felt interior need to make an impact on the present, with its intrinsically formless, liquid, impenetrable nature. Lastly, Graffiare il presente confirms that it is meaningful to hold a group exhibition, provided it is based on specific criteria, such as an opportunity for face-to-face interaction with the works of other artists and an opportunity for unexpected contaminations. […]
Homenaje a Testori presented to the public of Casa Testori a cycle of works that the artist Giovanni Frangidedicated to the owner of the house, Giovanni Testori: 80 repainted photographs to which were added three large paintings, made with oil and emulsion on canvas. By the artist’s will, all the works exhibited were for sale, in order to support the mission and activities of the Associazione Giovanni Testori. The two days of the exhibition were accompanied by two special events: a presentation meeting, held on 21 September with the participation of Giovanni Agosti and the artist Giovanni Frangi; a projection, on 22 September, of two recently rediscovered videos, the first edition of Interrogatorio a Maria (1981) and a documentary on the collection of the Ca’ Granda in Milan made by Giovanni Testori.
Massimo Kaufmann and Maria Morganti A project by Associazione Giovanni Testori Casa Testori 4 April – 11 May 2014
THAT EMBRACE OF COLOURS Davide Dall’Ombra
It is true that the two camellias in the garden bloom while the radiators are still on. Saying spring at Casa Testori means reopening doors that have never been closed, setting up a new exhibition around the beating heart of the two associations that animate it. While work is being done on future exhibitions, guided tours and events, more and more artists are taking turns to peek into their rooms for a new Giorni Felici that is just around the corner. And it is surprising that, once again, some of them compete for the desk with the current thesis student or PhD student to consult the archive of photographs and writings on Giovanni Testori. Opening this House to the contemporary is also proving to be the most effective way to send Testori’s work into circulation, bringing it to where artistic life is pulsating and enthusiastically discovering or rediscovering it, giving rise to a host of unexpected Testorians. Everything happens naturally, without the need for commissions or suggestions, just let the artists walk through these twenty rooms, only apparently empty. This exhibition is the result of an elaboration carried out over several years by two artists united by a profound visual syntony who have created a tenaciously desired project, born for these rooms. Massimo Kaufman, author of an important interview with Testori back in 1986 and protagonist of Giorni Felici in its first edition, has called together leading artists from the Italian figurative scene for a room destined to surprise and enchant. Maria Morganti investigated one of Testori’s most important books, Il gran teatro montano (The Great Mountain Theatre), discovering with the critic a profound harmony that goes far beyond appearances – Testori was one of the fiercest defenders of figurative painting – drawing on that deep level of “object colours” traced by Testori in the work of Gaudenzio Ferrari and Tanzio da Varallo, in which words and colour, writing and painting are indissolubly embraced.
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THE EXHIBITION
The project, conceived specifically for Giovanni Testori’s home, saw the two artists occupy the ground floor with distinct projects, which interpenetrated in moments of contact and confrontation. Massimo Kaufmann chose to recreate a winter garden, a choral site-specific work created with the collaboration of Stefano Arienti, Marco Cingolani, Giovanni Frangi, Andrea Mastrovito, Fulvia Mendini, Katja Noppes, Michela Pomaro and Massimo Uberti, who were asked to paint the walls of one of the rooms. Each artist, following the guidelines indicated by Kaufmann, drew a strip of wall without knowing the ones next to it, following the example of the cadavre exquis, the famous surrealist game. Maria Morganti drew her inspiration from Giovanni Testori’s Il gran teatro montano and the descriptions of Tanzio da Varallo’s and Gaudenzio Ferrari’s works at Sacro Monte di Varallo. Starting from these points of reference, the artist worked on the comparison between written colour and painted colour, between word and work, through a careful analysis of the text that gave rise to an intense stratification, in which it becomes difficult to define whether the text preceded the painting or vice versa. The result of this process was a sedimentation of oil veils on canvases, papers and sculptures in rhodochrosite and travertine, which occupied the main hall and the veranda of the house.
Sofia Bersanelli, Giulia Riva and Elisabetta Polelli A project by Angelo Barone Casa Testori
Three young artists, Sofia Bersanelli, Giulia Riva and Elisabetta Polelli, worked with their cameras around the Sacro Monte sculptures on display at Casa Testori (Arriva il gran teatro montano, Casa Testori, 9 April – 8 May 2016). They were guided by Angelo Barone, himself an artist, photographer and lecturer. The challenge was to understand how artists of the new generations intercept and revisit the forms of our past; what dialogue is created between them and a fascinating monument, but sometimes perceived as “distant”, such as the Sacro Monte of Varallo. The three young artists have interpreted these masterpieces with a great deal of freedom and creativity, each of them creating surprising paths through images.
The products of this workshop were exhibited at Casa Testori. On the occasion of the presentation, Angelo Barone and the artists dialogued with the director of the Ente Sacri Monti Elena De Filippis.
Emilio Isgrò Curated by Davide Dall’Ombra Castello Gamba – Museo d’arte moderna e contemporanea Châtillon, Valle d’Aosta 6 April – 16 June 2019
EMILIO ISGRÒ. THE 35 BOOKS OF THE BETROTHED, DELETED Davide Dall’Ombra
«In deleting the work, I came to realise how Manzoni’s writing being so powerful and pure has contributed to our literature second only to Dante. Since in Manzoni, culture too becomes nature».
At the centre of the exhibition Emilio Isgrò’s most impressive work is exhibited: the 35 deleted books dedicated to the most famous pages of The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni. I Promessi Sposi cancellati per venticinque lettori e dieci appestati is a work from 2016, specifically created for display at Casa Manzoni, in Milan. It is shown here, not just for its magnificent beauty and because it is illustrative of the poetics of the artist and his renowned deletions, but because it is a useful tool for understanding the creative effect that the intuition of the centrality of the word had on the artist. This is well expressed in the work of Isgrò housed in Castello Gamba and accessible on a tour of the Museum. The work is compiled of 35 copies of the novel, opened at symbolic pages, and exhibited in individual plexiglass display cases. The volumes used are an anastatic reprint of the novel’s first edition in its final version (Quarantana); the edition that Manzoni had Alessandro Goin illustrate, under precise instructions. Isgrò, Sicilian artist relocated to Milan, worked on the 70 pages in his usual fashion: he deleted almost all of the text with black ink or white paint, allowing key words to survive, either untouched or permitted to emerge because of the transparency of the marks he made. It is these untouched words that create a new text or better, provide us with a synthetic and poetic key to interpretation of the chosen passage. What might seem offensive reveals itself in fact to be an act of love. Isgrò’s actions throw us into the heart of the text helping us to understand the greatness of Manzoni’s writing. This is how, when silence is needed, nothing can be said, or newly added, only commas remain, marking the passage of time and to reassure us that something that cannot be described by words is happening. More often than not a few words are left untouched to evoke an entire chapter, like the conversion of the Unnamed: “dio, lo, Dio”. At times the strokes are more pictorial, visible when the two souls of the Nun of Monza appear, simultaneously in black and white. As regards the other sections, the pictorial beauty of the recreated pages is not lacking and is an essential component of the harmony transmitted by the work. The deletions provide a musical rhythm to the pages and the alternation of black and white is poetic in itself. But it is most certainly the words of Manzoni, trimmed down and smoothen like small, precious rocks that glisten amongst the grooves created by the artist, restoring the text with a greater evocative power. Three simple “ands”, surviving in the emptiness of the page, prolonging the anticipation of a happy ending implicit in the novel, whilst entirely new sentences, like that born of Fra Cristoforo’s instructions, “direte barca rispondete amore” dissolve the lines between writing and figurative art. The greatness of this work lies in this synaesthesia between these two languages. A novel in general and, as Giovanni Testori underlines, Manzoni in particular, directs the reader, word after word, to the culmination of a feeling, an emotion, rage or pity whichever it arouses, falling in with the rhythm of language and its narration. A work of art, on the other hand, plays out immediately, before the viewer: it is as if we were able to read the entire novel in an instant, said Testori. Writing and figurative art have very different times for fruition: one can make us run or walk, whilst the other obliges us to take an immediate Olympic dive. Here then, with his deletions, Isgrò impresses on literature the breakneck speed of art allowing us to embrace the essence of an entire chapter in the blink of an eye. Yet, at the same time with a work like this, we are brought, book after book, a stream of characters or photograms, at a pace typical of reading, formed by understanding, appreciation, wonder and profound self-identification.
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THE EXHIBITION
A new exhibition for a new Casa Testori project, desired and supported by the Autonomous Region of Valle d’Aosta. This project has seen Casa Testori conduct a study of the collection of the Castello GambaMuseum, the museum that houses the Valle d’Aosta’s 20th century collection, identifying a number of works and masters capable of acting as a pivot for future enhancement initiatives, so that the Gamba Castle can definitively earn its rightful place as an essential destination for tourists to the castles in the Valle d’Aosta and a favourite haunt of the region’s inhabitants. The first result of this collaboration is the exhibition Emilio Isgrò. I 35 libri dei Promessi Sposi cancellati(The 35 Cancelled Books of the Betrothed), which displays an important and articulated work by one of the most important Italian conceptual artists, in dialogue with his painting conserved at Castello Gamba: Quel che è scritto (1991), presented for the occasion with new effective interpretations. This is the fifth “episode” of the successful exhibition series Détails, with which Castello Gamba enhances the value of its heritage, drawing the public’s attention to one of the authors present in the collection.
Giovanni Testori Curated by Davide Dall’Ombra In collaboration with Associazione Giovanni Testori Mart – Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto 28 March – 24 May 2015
THE SAVED PAINTING Giuseppe Frangi
In 1950 Giovanni Testori was 27 years old. His profile was already that of an intellectual who was difficult to classify, due to the multiplicity of fields in which he was involved. But in that 1950 one of these spheres disappeared, and it was certainly one of his most beloved: painting. Testori, hurt by the incomprehension and consequent covering up of the frescoes in the church of San Carlo al Corso in Milan, had decided to end his experience as a painter. In a gesture typical of his temperament, he destroyed the canvases he had painted up to that time and which remained in his studio in Via Santa Marta. Practically only those he had sold or given away were saved. And this Crocifissione (Crucifixion) was saved, which Testori always kept with him until the end. It was clear that the Crocifissione, represented by symbols and dated 1949, was something very important to him. Now the discovery by Davide Dall’Ombra of an important series of preparatory drawings for that painting in a Roman collection reinforces that clue. Thanks to these drawings it is possible to follow the development of Testori’s thought and ideas around a work that is certainly the most important and the most ambitious of his painting season, marked by a critical commitment to the return of contemporary art to churches. On the one hand, Testori showed to be fully in line with the novelties of figurative art in those years, committed to the personal reworking of Picasso’s innovations, but on the other hand he confirmed his extraordinary originality, breaking away from the models and enacting a “staging” of surprising originality both stylistic and iconographic. An articulated and fascinating nucleus that required an adequate contextualisation, capable of considering his critical engagement with his “realist” companions and the medieval sources underlying the iconographic choices made by Testori […].
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THE EXHIBITION
The Mart Museum in Rovereto, one of the most important and innovative contemporary art museums in Italy, hosted “Crocifissione ‘49. I disegni ritrovati”, an exhibition that presented the public with an unexpected Testori. A Testori before “I segreti di Milano”, before Luchino Visconti and Robero Longhi: a very young Testori painter. In the 1940s, Giovanni Testori, even before being a writer, was in fact known as a painter, an associate of the Milanese school of “Corrente”, a fellow traveller of Ennio Morlotti, Bruno Cassinari and Renato Guttuso. Even his interventions as a militant critic were dictated by the need to find, first and foremost for himself, a viable way forward for Italian realism which, recognising Cèzanne as its father, was willing to go beyond Picasso’s dazzling vision. These years of experimentation, between 1948 and 1949, were illuminated by the important discovery of 26 drawings, displayed in the exhibition, which illustrate Testori’s creative process that led to the San Carlo frescoes and one of the rare works that escaped destruction: the Crocifissione (Crucifixion) signed and dated 1949, the most important painting by Giovanni Testori, which brought this phase of his artistic life to a close following the disappointment at the fading of the frescoes. Unique in Testori’s pictorial production, this group of papers allows us to follow his creative process step by step, at a time of great formal and iconographic research.
