ARMANDO TESTA
IL DESIGN DELLE IDEE / IDEAS' DESIGN

Produced by the Municipality of Milan - Cultural Department, Acacia (Association of Friends of Contemporary Art), TestaperTesta and Change Performing Arts, a major retrospective of Armando Testa is held at the PAC Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea (Contemporary Art Pavilion), bringing to the fore the work by this multifaceted artist. The exhibition presents a less known aspect of his work—that of his production as a designer—in connection with the Salone del Mobile events, which enliven Milan during the week of the opening. This event adds to other important anthological exhibitions of the master: the retrospective exhibitions held at the Castello di Rivoli Museum and at Castel Sant’Elmo, Naples, in 2001, as well as the exhibition at the Italian Cultural Institute in London in 2004. Armando Testa is the protagonist at the PAC once more, after the solo exhibition devoted to him in 1984, already widely acclaimed as a major creative artist and father of Italian advertising.

“A bright mind was that of Armando. A reasoning that was at the service of imagination, where fantasy is magic and creativity is confidence,” says the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs of the City of Milan, Massimiliano Finazzer Flory. He adds, “We are presenting an exhibition that focuses on the ‘design of ideas’ and explores the master’s varied production as a designer. Armando Testa’s vibrant creativity influenced, in fact, the fields of art, society and culture. His language—which mainly uses metaphors and figures of speech—ironically and cleverly tried to depict, narrate and interpret reality through the vices and virtues of the Italians.”

This retrospective exhibition at the PAC—curated by Gemma De Angelis Testa and Giorgio Verzotti—is not a mere celebration of the inspiration of the great commercial artist, author of characters and situations that became part of the social imaginary of most Italians a long time ago. It intends to show some less considered aspects of the creativity of the great master, giving space to his production as a designer of objects—marked by irony and imagination—that characterize his work in the field of advertising too.
Armando Testa was, in fact, also a designer, as evidenced by the furnishings in the exhibition, and many of his graphic ideas were developed as shown by his projects. This stress accompanied all Testa’s works, either the ones specifically devoted to advertising or the freer ones that he simultaneously created as a painter and sculptor.

Armando Testa’s interest in visual arts, architecture and design influenced his work from the beginning: the first important ICI poster, dated 1937, explicitly uses geometric abstraction. It is on display along with a sampling of the greatest inventions made, at least, through fifty years of work, first alone, and later, as the head of an agency that made history in advertising language in Italy, and not only, anticipating the formal and conceptual innovations by important contemporary artists. The choice of works allows visitors to ascertain the “persistence” of a stress towards the production of signs, as well as the evolution of the artist’s language: the spheres of Punt e Mes made as a bas-relief, the conical characters of Carmencita and Caballero that were the beginning of the fifty-year union between Armando Testa and Lavazza and that here become sculptures along with several other unusual items, until the crosses of 1990, a true reinvention of the religious symbol.

Another little known aspect is his drawing: Testa was a hard-working cartoonist. That activity accompanied almost all of his working time, until he was able to produce a very large amount of small cartoons, which might be called “sketches,” compared to his most important achievements. Very concise selections of unpublished crayon drawings and watercolor paintings are part of the exhibition at the PAC.

The exhibition includes the screening of the short film that Pappi Corsicato has recently devoted to Armando Testa, Povero ma moderno (Poor but modern), successfully presented and awarded at the 2009 Venice Film Festival 2009. The documentary, directed by one of the most inventive Italian directors, serves as documentation of the master’s creative work, exploring the human side of this influential dreamer, his irony, his imagination and his unconventionality.
The catalog, published by Silvana Editoriale, contains the texts by the two curators and valuable information by Germano Celant and by semiologist Ugo Volli.
As usual, there is an educational program for the public designed and developed by MARTE.
The yearly exhibitions at the PAC are held thanks to the help of TOD’S.
The exhibition was also organized thanks to the help of Lavazza and Armando Testa agency, which have been working together—perhaps it is the unique case in Italy—for more than 50 years.


CREDITS


ARMANDO TESTA
Il design delle idee / Ideas' Design

Curators Gemma De Angelis Testa and Giorgio Verzotti

Exhibition produced by Comune di Milano – Cultura, Acacia Associazione Amici Arte Contemporanea, TestaperTesta, Change Performing Arts

With the contribution of Armando Testa SpA, Lavazza