Associazione Giovanni Testori

English version

We are working on a presentation of the main contents of the website in English. Below you can find the biography of Giovanni Testori and the history of our Association.

GIOVANNI TESTORI (1923-1993)
Writer, playwright, painter, art critic, poet, film director, actor: it is hard to define Giovanni Testori in  a single word. Born in Novate Milanese in 1923, from an early age he followed his tumultuous, creative nature which led him to produce an impressive and varied amount of literature. At 17 he published his first articles of criticism of contemporary

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art, a predominant if not exclusive theme of his early works.   He met Roberto Longhi, thanks to whom he developed his mature, enthralling and empassioned style of analysing historical works of art, which he expressed in his writings on sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century art in Piedmont and Lombardy and such artists as Martino Spanzotti, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Cerano, Tanzio da Varallo, Daniele Crespi, Cairo e Fra Galgario. Later came writings on art in the area surrounding Brescia, from Foppa to Ceruti, by way of Moretto, Savoldo and  Romanino,

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of whom Testori became one of the finest interpreters. His activity as a writer and playwright are not to be forgotten as he carried them out while working on history and art. In 1954 he published Il dio di Roserio, Roserio’s God, after which came the collection of tales and plays called “I Segreti di Milano” ,The Secrets of Milan, in which Testori tells of the suburbs of the city, poor but very human. Many of Testori’s works have been staged and linked to important names in Italian culture from La Maria Brasca (1960) interpreted by Franca

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Valeri at the Milan theatre called the Piccolo Teatro to the association with Luchino Visconti who, after having used three short stories from  Il ponte della Ghisolfa, the Ghisolfa Bridge, for the screenplay of  Rocco e i suoi Fratelli, Rocco and his Brothers, directed two works by Testori: L'Arialda (1960), Arialda, and La Monaca di Monza - The Nun of Monza (1967) until his two great artistic associations with Franco Parenti in the Seventies and Franco Branciaroli in the Eighties. From 1975 onward Testori started to work on the national newspaper

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"Corriere della Sera". After some articles on art criticism and editorials on ethical topics, Testori had taken the place of Pasolini as a controversial front page commentator and from 1978 he was the editor of the arts page, publishing some 700 reviews of art exhibitions together with a great deal of militant criticism.  From 1990 a tumour forced him into long stays in hospital, until his death in 1993. They were nevertheless years of intense work which led to numerous plays of extreme vitality.                                 

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THE ASSOCIATION
1998 saw the foundation of this Association thanks to Giuseppe Frangi, and the many supporters who donate their precious time and work in various capacities: Francesco Frangi, Giovanni Agosti, Andrée Ruth Shammah, Fulvio Panzeri, Luca Doninelli, Sandro Lombardi, and Emanuele Banterle. This no-profit organisation was founded with the aim of spreading knowledge of the writer by means of initiatives and publications which bring his works to a broader public.
Apart from organising events, shows and lectures, editing catalogues and books,

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making rare and unpublished writing widely available for consultation, maintaining the website with texts, audio visual items and news, the Association conserves, increases and enhances the Fondo Testori,  Testori Fund, an archive which the Ministery of Culture has declared  to be “of particular historical importance” . In 2007 it published the complete Bibliography of Giovanni Testori. Since 2003 Associazione Testori has been editing the book serie “Testori a..”; as a result of Giovanni Agosti’s idea, this book serie aims at deepening

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the relationship between Testori and those places whose artistic heritage he has emphasized.