Giovanni Testori
Giovanni Testori was an Italian writer, journalist, poet, art and literary critic, dramatist, screenplay writer, theatrical director and painter.
Biography
Childhood and youth
“It is enough to love reality, always, in every possible way, even in the precipitate and approximate way that has been mine. But love it. Apart from that, there are no precepts”.Giovanni Testori was born in Novate Milanese, a town on the outskirts of Milan, the third of six siblings. Both his parents were originally from the upper Brianza area. His father, Edoardo, was from Sormano; his mother, Lina Paracchi, from Lasnigo. These were places that remained close to Testori's consciousness and a part of his creative imagery. His memories frequently return to the period of his childhood and his family, to which he remained intimately linked.
Edoardo Testori had moved from Sormano to set up a textile factory alongside the tracks of the Ferrovie Nord. Beside it, he built his home. The house where Giovanni grew up, and where he spent the larger part of his existence, is today the seat of the Associazione Giovanni Testori.
Testori applied himself inconsistently during his earlier school years, but in 1939 he enrolled in the “liceo classico” , obtaining “maturità” in 1942.
While at the “liceo”, he cultivated his passion for art and the theatre. Before reaching the age of majority, he had published, as art critic, a series of articles in “Via Consolare”. The first to be written, in 1941, was a brief essay on Giovanni Segantini.
In addition to “Via Consolare”, Testori contributed to other magazines, such as “Architrave” of Bologna and “Pattuglia di Punta”, with articles dedicated especially to contemporary artists.
In September 1942, he enrolled in the faculty of architecture at the Politecnico di Milano.
The 1940s
In 1943, during his second year of studies at the Politecnico, Testori was compelled to evacuate with his family for several months to the big house at Sormano, in Valassina. This created an environment in which he could cultivate the other enthusiasm which he was to maintain for several years, that for painting, which he practiced as a self-taught artist.In these years, alongside articles and monographs on themes of contemporary art, Testori's first writings dedicated to renaissance artists appeared, from Debiti e crediti di Dosso Dossi to Discorso sulle mani di Leonardo and Introduzione a Grünewald.
In 1942, Testori also made his first appearance as a playwright, with two single-act pieces, La morte and Un quadro. The texts were published separately in “Via Consolare” and were issued together the following year in a booklet by Edizioni di Pattuglia. In 1943, moreover, “Posizione” published his first short story, Morte di Andrea, while his first poem came out in 1945, in Elio Vittorini's “Il Politecnico”.
Towards a new Realism
During the years of the Second World War, pictorial activity acquired a significant weight for Testori, both practically and theoretically. He published articles which openly took a firm position in the debate between realism and abstraction which was animating the Italian artistic scene, under the strong influence of Picasso. Testori's own paintings also reflected this influence. His views on Realtà della pittura were expounded in an article published in December 1945, in the first issue of the Milanese periodical “Argine Numero”, produced with companions and friends of “Corrente”. These included Ernesto Treccani and Renato Guttuso. The following year, in the same magazine, edited by Testori, there appeared Oltre Guernica. Manifesto del Realismo di pittori e scultori, signed, as well as by Testori himself, by Giuseppe Ajmone, Rinaldo Bergolli, Egidio Bonfante, Gianni Dova, Ennio Morlotti, Giovanni Paganin, Cesare Peverelli, Vittorio Tavernari and Emilio Vedova.Testori's idea of reality in art, in this moment, was the opposite of that upheld by his painter friend Renato Guttuso. The aim was not to reach reality through painting, but “to be able to start from reality. To have, that is to say, a faith that allows this departure”. And not so much for painting, added Testori, “as for living”. A full approach to life first and art next is only possible by starting from a total immersion in reality.
Abandonment of painting
In 1947, Testori obtained a degree in letters at the Università Cattolica di Milano. In his thesis, La forma nella pittura moderna, he considered the evolution of form in early 20th century European painting, declaring that the search was ongoing for a shared attitude to Italian realism. The last chapter, Fisica dello spirito, is a sort of manifesto in which he declares the need for a renewal of art in sacred spaces, which could be achieved if clients and artists were to come to terms with the language of the avant-garde, from Picasso to Léger.His first period as a painter concluded with the frescoes, now lost, of the Four Evangelists, created in 1948 on the columns supporting the dome of the presbytery in the church of San Carlo al Corso in Milan, and the tormented Crucifixion, now exhibited at Casa Testori. From then on, Testori temporarily abandoned painting, destroying most of his works and dedicating himself almost exclusively to writing.
Commitment to the theatre
Alongside his pictorial research, in the late 1940s Testori's enthusiasm for the theatre grew, due in part to his friendship with Paolo Grassi and his attendance at the newly created Piccolo Teatro. From 1947 to 1948, he curated a weekly column of theatre reviews for the periodical “Democrazia”.The text of Testori's first play, La Caterina di Dio, has never been rediscovered. It was staged in 1948 at the theatre of the Basilica di Milano, in the deconsecrated church of San Paolo Converso, with Franca Valeri. In 1949 and 1950 he wrote another play, Tentazione nel convento, which was never performed in his lifetime. In March 1950, at the Teatro Verdi di Padova, the Compagnia del Teatro dell’Università, directed by Gianfranco De Bosio, staged another of Testori's works, Le lombarde.
The 1950s
In 1951, the exhibition Caravaggio e i caravaggeschi was mounted in Palazzo Reale, Milan. On this occasion, Testori met Roberto Longhi, the great art historian he had long admired for his critical commitment and for the quality of his prose. The meeting led to a long-lasting friendship and a collaboration with the newly born magazine “Paragone”, edited by Longhi himself. Testori's first essay for the magazine, in 1952, was on Francesco del Cairo, a painter now recognized as a major figure in 17th century figurative art.In 1953, Testori published in “Paragone” an article on the 17th century painter Carlo Ceresa, from Bergamo, while he continued throughout the decade to support the activity of his friend Ennio Morlotti, who exhibited at the Galleria del Milione, the Venice Biennials and the Quadrennial of Rome.
In 1954, Einaudi's series I gettoni brought out his first novel, Il dio di Roserio. This was set among the cycling clubs of the Lombard province and outskirts, to which the author returned repeatedly to give a voice, laying bare their inner dramas, to the depths of humanity, using the same method that he had used in art criticism and practice, and in his theatrical invention. Already in this public debut, the experimental nature and the pictorial matrix of Testori's language, imbued with dialectic inflections, were evident.
In 1955, Testori curated the important Mostra del Manierismo piemontese e lombardo del Seicento, mounted in Palazzo Madama, Turin, and in Ivrea, with the support of the Centro Culturale Olivetti di Ivrea and of Vittorio Viale, Director of the Musei Civici of Turin. The catalogue focused on the characteristics of the painters operating in Lombardy and Piedmont during the period in which Carlo and Federico Borromeo were cardinals. These were artists for whom Testori himself was to coin the happy epithet of “pestanti”, on account of the plague that threatened the territory of the Milanese Duchy from 1576 to 1630.
The following year, Testori collaborated in the first major monographic exhibition dedicated to Gaudenzio Ferrari, at the Museo Borgogna of Vercelli. In his essay in the catalogue, Gaudenzio e il Sacro Monte, Testori reassessed the work of the artist from Valsesia also as a sculptor.
Among Testori's personal predilections, the sweetness of Gaudenzio Ferrari's painting and sculpture would always represent for him the dimension of domestic affections. Testori's more visceral passions, on the other hand, were to find their match in the more tormented work of Antonio d’Enrico, known as Tanzio da Varallo. Testori curated the first monographic exhibition dedicated to this latter, mounted in the Musei Civici of Turin and at Varallo Sesia the following year.
In 1958, the “Biblioteca di letteratura” of Feltrinelli, edited by Giorgio Bassani, issued Il ponte della Ghisolfa, the first volume of short stories of the cycle I segreti di Milano, followed in 1959 by La Gilda del Mac Mahon and by Il Fabbricone in 1961. Testori related dramas and heroes from the outskirts of the city with an attitude of great humanity and understanding that was to bring him international success. The French and Spanish editions of Il ponte della Ghisolfa and Gilda del Mac Mahon were soon joined by translations of Il Fabbricone into English and German, as well as French and Spanish.
Still in 1958, Testori published a book on the frescoes in the Church of San Bernardino in Ivrea, in the heart of the Olivetti industrial settlement. These frescoes were the masterpiece of Giovanni Martino Spanzotti, an artist long active in the Piedmont territory during the 15th and 16th centuries.