Testori, Giovanni 1923–1993

PERSONAL: Born May 12, 1923, in Milan, Italy; died of cancer, March 16, 1993, in Milan, Italy; son of Edoardo (a textile mill owner) and Lina Testori. Education: Doctoral studies at Universita Cattolica.

CAREER: Art critic and organizer of art exhibits; fiction writer.

WRITINGS:

Il dio di Roserio (novella; title means "The God of Roserio"), Einaudi (Turin, Italy), 1954, reprinted, with an introduction by Vittorio Spinazzola, A. Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 2002.

Mostra di Pier Francesco Guala, Centro Culturale Olivetti (Ivrea, Italy), 1954.

Mostra del manierismo piemontese e lombardo del seicento: sessanta opere di Moncalvo, Cerano, Morazzone, Procaccini, Tanzio, D. Crespi, Nuvoloni, Del Cairo, [Turin, Italy], 1955.

Morlotti, Centro culturale Olivetti (Ivrea, Italy), 1957.

I segreti di Milano (title means "The Secrets of Milan"), Feltrinelli (Milan, Italy), 1958, reprinted, edited by Alain Toubas, Cinisello Balsamo (Milan, Italy), 2003.

II ponte della Ghisolfa (title means "The Bridge on the River Ghisolfa"), Feltrinelli (Milan, Italy), 1958.

G. Martion Spanzotti: gli affreschi di Ivria, Centro culturale Olivetti (Ivrea, Italy), 1958.

La Gilda del Mac Mahon (title means "Gilda from Mac Mahon Street"), Feltrinelli (Milan, Italy), 1959.

(Editor) Tanzio da Varallo, [Turin, Italy], 1959.

La Maria Brasca: quattro atti (four-act play), Feltrinelli (Milan, Italy), 1960.

(Coeditor) Rocco e i suoi fratelli, di Luchino Visconti, Cappelli (Bologna, Italy), 1960.

L'Arialda: due tempi (two-act play), Feltrinelli (Milan, Italy), 1960.

Gaudenzio alle porte di Varallo, [Varallo Sesia, Italy], 1960.

Il fabbricone, Feltrinelli (Milan, Italy), 1961, translation published as The House in Milan, Harcourt, Brace & World (New York, NY), 1962, reprinted in Italian, with an introduction by Giuliano Gramigna, A. Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 2002.

Il Brianza: e altri racconti, Feltrinelli (Milan, Italy), 1962.

Elogio dell'arte novarese, Banca popolare di Novara (Novara, Italy), 1962.

Giovanni Paganin: sculpture dal 1959 al '63, Milione (Milan, Italy), 1964.

(With Francesco Queirazza) Palinsesto valsesiano, All'Insegna del Pesce d'Oro (Milan, Italy), 1964.

Il gran teatro montano: saggi su Gaudenzio Ferrari, Feltrinelli (Milan, Italy), 1965.

I trionfi (title means "The Triumphs"), Feltrinelli (Milan, Italy), 1965.

Manieristi piemontesi e lombardi del '600, Edizioni Rai (Milan, Italy), 1966.

Crocifissione (title means "Crucifixion"), All'Insegna del Pesce d'Oro (Milan, Italy), 1966.

(Author of preface) James McGarrell, [Galerie] Claude Bernard, Paris, C. Bernard (Paris, France), 1967.

La monaca di Monza (also see below; title means "The Nun of Monza"), Feltrinelli (Milan, Italy), 1967.

(Editor) Giacomo Ceruti, Finarte (Milan, Italy), 1967.

L'amore (title means "Love"), Feltrinelli (Milan, Italy), 1968.

Varlin, La Galleria (Turin, Italy), 1968.

James McGarrell: opere recenti, [Rome, Italy], 1968.

La cappella della strage, [Vercelli, Italy], 1969.

Erodiade (title means "Herodias"), Feltrinelli (Milan, Italy), 1969, reprinted, Vivani Editore (Rome, Italy), 1993.

Nature moret di Ernesto Ornati, All'Insegna del Pesce d'Oro (Milan, Italy), 1970.

Per sempre (title means "Forever"), Feltrinelli (Milan, Italy), 1970.

(Editor) Thorn Prikker, All'Insegna del Pesce d'Oro (Milan, Italy), 1970.

(Author of text) Fra Galgario, ERI (Turin, Italy), 1970.

José Jardiel, Galleria Galatea (Turin, Italy), 1970.

Giovanni Testori: Torino, 16 novembre-18 decembre 1971, Galleria Galatea (Turin, Italy), 1971.

Cagnaccio di San Pietro, Galleria Narciso (Turin, Italy), 1971.

Bubu (screenplay), 1971.

L'Ambleto, Rizzoli (Milan, Italy), 1972.

(Author of text) Antonio Lopez-Garcia, Galleria Galatea (Turin, Italy), 1972.

Nel tuo sangue (title means "In Your Blood"), Rizzoli (Milan, Italy), 1973.

La cattedrale (title means "The Cathedral"), Rizzoli (Milan, Italy), 1974.

(Translator) William Shakespeare, Macbetto, Rizzoli (Milan, Italy), 1974.

(Editor) Romanino e Moretto alla cappella del Sacramento, Grafo (Brescia, Italy), 1975.

Passio Laetitiae et Filicitatis (novel), Rizzoli (Milan, Italy), 1975.

(With Helmut Kolle) Helmut Kolle, Galleria Trentadue (Milan, Italy), 1975.

Beniamino Simoni a Cerveno, Grafo (Brescia, Italy), 1976.

Edipus, Rizzoli (Milan, Italy), 1977.

(With Lorenzo Predali) La faccia dell'uomo, Edit-photo (Milan, Italy), 1977.

(With Armando de Stefano) De Stefano: Odette e il jolly, Trantadue (Milan, Italy), 1978.

Conversazione con la morte (also see below), Rizzoli (Milan, Italy), 1978.

Interrogatorio a Maria (also see below; title means "Questions for Mary"), Rizzoli (Milan, Italy), 1979.

(With Mauro Garnelli) Guida al duomo di Sal, Grafo (Brescia, Italy), 1979.

(With Roberto Longhi) Disegni di Roberto Longhi, Compagnia del Disegno (Milan, Italy), 1980.

(With Luigi Giussani) Il senso della nascita: colloquio con Don Luigi Giussani, Rizzoli (Milan, Italy), 1980.

Factum est (also see below; title means "It Is Done"), Rizzoli (Milan, Italy), 1981.

(Author of text) Varlin: peintures 12 février-27 mars 1982, Galerie Claude Bernard (Paris, France), 1982.

La maestra della vita, Rizzoli (Milan, Italy), 1982.

Eugene Bloch, 1906–1940, Compagnia del Disegno (Milan, Italy), 1982.

Ossa mea (1981–1982), Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1983.

Post-Hamlet, Rizzoli (Milan, Italy), 1983.

(With Mario de Micheli) Bacon a Brera e quaranta disegni di Grosz in sosta a Milano, Multhipla (Milan, Italy), 1983.

Franceses, disegni giovanili: digressione autobiografica di F. Francese, 1932–1945, Seggiola (Milan, Italy), 1983.

I libri di Giovanni Testori, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1984.

I promessi sposi alla prova: azione teatrale in due giornate (also see below), Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1985.

(With Kei Mitsuuchi) Kei Mitsuuchi: ai piedi della croce, Mazzotta (Milan, Italy), 1985.

(Compiler) Il lombardo de Grada: mostra antologica de Raffaele de Grada (1885–1957); Comune di Iseo 27 luglio-4 novembre 1985, Palazzo dell'Arsenale, Chiesa di San Giovanni, Chiesa dei Disciplini, Iseo, luglionovembre 1985, Vangelista, 1985.

(With Stefania Stefani Perrone) Artisti del legno: la scultura in Valsesia dal XV al XVIII secolo, Vals-esia editrice (Borgosesia, Italy), 1985.

Giancarlo Vitali: opere, 1980–1984, Compagnia del Disegno (Milan, Italy), 1985.

Diadmata, Garzanit (Milan, Italy), 1986.

(With Hermann Albert) Albert, Electra (Milan, Italy), 1986.

(With Samuele Gabai) Opere, 1985–1986, Compagnia del Disegno (Milan, Italy), 1986.

(With Fausto Faini) Opere 1985, Compagnia del Dis-egno (Milan, Italy), 1986.

Allessandro Verdi: olii e pastelli, Compagnia del Disegno (Milan, Italy), 1987.

(With Igor Mitoraj) Igor Matoraj: sculture 1987, Compagnia del Disegno (Milan, Italy), 1987.

(With Enzo Cucci) Cucci, Testori, Compagnia del Disegno (Milan, Italy), 1987.

(With Stefania Stefani Perrone) Questi sono li misteri che sono sopra el Monte de Varalle, in una "Guida" poetica del 1514, Societa per la Conservazione delle Opere d'Arte e die Monumenti in Valsesia, 1987.

(With Bernd Zimmer) Bernd Zimmer: Meer: Studio d'arte Cannaviello, Mailand, März-April 1987, The Gallery (London, England) 1987.

In exitu, Garzanti (Milan, Italy), 1988.

(With Giovanni Frangi) Frangi: Milano, Compagniadel Disegno (Milan, Italy), 1988.

Courbet e l'informale, Fabbri (Milan, Italy), 1988.

L'eterna neve della vita e della morte, [Italy], 1988.

Daniele Crespi nelle raccolte private, Fabbri (Milan, Italy), 1988.

G. Courbet, 1819–1877, Compagnia del Disegno (Milan, Italy), 1988.

—Et nihil (1985–1986), Banca Toscana (Florence, Italy), 1989.

Maddalena, con una ghirlanda di testi e di immagini, F.M. Ricci (Milan, Italy), 1989.

(With Igor Mitoraj) Igor Mitoraj: sculture 1989, New York Academy of Art (New York, NY), 1989.

(With Enrico Colombotto Rosso) Enrico Colombotto Rosso: una "corte dei miracoli," una esposizione, Fabbri (Milan, Italy), 1989.

Sfaust, Longanesi (Milan, Italy), 1990.

(With Rainer Fetting) Fetting, Compagnia del Disegno (Milan, Italy), 1990.

SdisOrè, Compagnia del Disegno (Milan, Italy), 1991.

Francis Gruber 1912–1948, Compagnia del Disegno (Milan, Italy), 1991.

Marino Marini, Compagnia del Disegno (Milan, Italy), 1991.

Volte face: cinquantanove rittrati di Sergio Vacchi, Fabbri (Milan, Italy), 1991.

Santinello, Compagnia del Disegno (Milan, Italy), 1991.

Hermann Albert, Studio d'Arte Cannaviello (Milan, Italy), 1991.

(With Carlo Bo) Traduzione della prima lettera ai Corinti, Longanesi (Milan, Italy), 1991.

Gli angeli dello sterminio (novel; title means "The Exterminating Angel"), Compagnia del Disegno (Milan, Italy), 1992.

(With Graham Sutherland) Sutherland: l'atelier dei ritratti, Compagnia del Disegno (Milan, Italy), 1992.

(With Ennio Morlotti) Morlotti: variazioni sopra un canto bagnanti 1991–1992, Ruggerini & Zonca (Milan, Italy), 1992.

Vernizzi, Compagnia del Disegno (Milan, Italy), 1992.

Tentazione nel convento, Il Girasole (Catania, Italy), 1993.

(With Luca Doninelli) Conversazioni con Testori, U. Guanda (Parma, Italy), 1993.

Federica Galli: verdute veneziane: Palazzo Sertoli, Sondrio, Credito Valtellinese (Varese, Italy), 1993.

(With Giovanni Raboni) La notte oscura: una esposizione, Fabbri (Milan, Italy), 1993.

L'Hamblette, Dramaturgie (Paris, France) 1994.

(With Rudy Chiappini) Giovanni Testori, Charta (Milan, Italy), 1994.

Tre lai, Longanesi (Milan, Italy), 1994.

Nebbia al Giambellino (novel; title means "Fog at Giambellino"), Longanesi (Milan, Italy), 1995.

(With Pietro Marani) La realta della pittura: scritti di storia e critica d'arte dal Quattrocento al Settecento, Longanesi (Milan, Italy), 1995.

(With Fulvio Panzeri) Opere, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1996.

(With Fulvio Panzeri and Giovanni Raboni) Opere 2, 1965–1977, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1997.

Il Branda, N. Aragno (Turin, Italy), 2001.

Amleto: una storia per il cinema, edited by Fulvio Panzeri, N. Aragno (Toino, Italy), 2002.

Conversazione con la morte; Interrogatorio a Maria; Factum est: la seconda trilogia, edited by Fulvio Panzeri, preface by Davide Rondoni, Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli (Milan, Italy), 2003.

I pormessi sposi alla prova; La monaca di Monza, edited by Fulvio Panzeri, A. Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 2003.

Maestro no: Intervista e fotografie su "In exitu," edited by Antonio Ria, preface by Giovanni Raboni, text by Lalla Romano and Franco Branciaroli, Interlinea (Novara, Italy) 2004.

Also contributor to books, including I pittori della realta in Lombardia, [Mostra, Italy], 1953; Giacomo Ceruti e la ritrattistica del suo tempo nell'Italia Settentrionale, [Turin, Italy], 1967; San Giovanni in Brescia, Grafo (Brescia, Italy), 1975; Paolo Vallorz, Mario Tazzoli (Milan, Italy), 1975; Moroni in Val Seriana, Grafo (Brescia, Italy), 1978; Varlin, 1900–1977, Matthiesen Fine Art (London, England), 1985; Martin Disler: Bilder und Plastiken [Zurich, Switzerland], 1987; Giulioano Vangi, Compagnia del Disegno (Milan, Italy), 1989; Igor Mitoraj: sculture e disegni, Comune di Cesana (Cesana, Italy), 1989; Van Gogh: catologo completo dei dipinti, Cantini (Florence, Italy), 1990; Marino Marini: opere, Comune di Cesena (Cesana, Italy), 1990; Igor Mitoraj, Fabbri (Milan, Italy), 1991; Ferroni: incisioni, 1957–1991, Bellinzona (Lecco, Italy), 1991; Rainer Fetting: scultore-pittore, Comune di Cesana, Rocca Malatestiana, 15 giugno-6 ottobre 1991, Comune di Cesena (Cesana, Italy), 1991; and La maesta della vita e altri scritti, Rizzoli (Milan, Italy), 1998. Author of introductions to books, including Abraham Mintchine, Galleria Lorenzelli (Bergamo, Italy), 1969; Rudolf Schlichter: Prima mostra retros-pettiva, Galleria del Levante (Milan, Italy), 1971; Carla Tolomeo, Galleria d'Arte Cavour (Milan, Italy), 1972; and Nata, Studio d'arte Cannaviello (Milan, Italy), 1985.

ADAPTATIONS: Il ponte della Ghisolfa was produced as the motion picture Rocco and His Brothers in the United States, 1960, released on video by Video Dimensions, 1989.

SIDELIGHTS: Giovanni Testori came to literature by way of painting, and according to his critics, his affinity for color and tone characterizes much of his writing. The Milan-bred son of a textile mill owner, Testori was educated in private Catholic schools. He wrote his thesis on "Form in Contemporary Painting" and devoted much of his subsequent professional career to art history and criticism. "By the end of his life," noted Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Augustus Pallotta, Testori "was best known as an expert on seventeenth-and eighteenth-century artists from Piedmont and from his native Lombardy." He also organized many art exhibits and wrote the text for their corresponding catalogs. Testori's own art was first exhibited in 1971 in Turin.

As a young man Testori began to explore his creative side through writing. His first important work of fiction, Il dio di Roserio, was published in 1954. This novella concerns a bicycle racer, Dante Pessina, who is a top athlete of humble background determined to use his talent to gain riches and fame. Only one man stands in his way, his team captain, Consonni, "who has similar aspirations," according to Pallotta. In a key race, Pessina "deliberately causes an accident in which Consonni suffers severe head injuries and is eliminated from the competition," Pallotta continued. "In the second event Pessina races both against time and his own guilt, suppressing the latter through his indomitable desire to win." To Pallotta, the bicycle races serve as a metaphor for Italian society in the 1950s, "in which the main objective in life was material success."

Il dio di Roserio is Testori's experiment in the Milanese dialect, though he soon would revert to a more streamlined narrative style marked by the use of interior monologue. But the author's Milan background continued to be the subject of several works, most notably the multivolume I segreti di Milano, consisting of short stories, plays, and a novel, all depicting "proletarian life in Italy's most industrialized city," Pallotta explained. The short-story segment, collected under the title Il ponte della Ghisolfa, contains a revised and non-dialectic version of Il dio di Roserio. To Pallotta, "the most important theme in Il ponte della Ghisolfa is the role of the family as the basic unit of society; the serious crisis the Italian family is experiencing today is prefigured here with remarkable clarity."

Part two of I segreti di Milano, titled La Gilda del Mac Mahon, follows up on the characters and events from the previous volume, with one notable exception, according to Pallotta: In these new stories the author's outlook "is markedly more negative and pessimistic." The critic points to the short story "Cara la mia zia," which depicts the protest of tenement dwellers against the foul smell from nearby oil refineries. Such scenes "show that the economic boom of the late 1950s did not reach the lowest substratum of Milanese society," noted Pallotta. Testori's plays, likewise, focus on the proletariat in postwar Italy. La Maria Brasca: quattro atti and L'Arialda: due tempi, two volumes in I segreti di Milano, dramatize the rivalry between two women for a man. L'Arialda in particular made headlines when its 1960 production in Rome was canceled after a judge ruled the play's language obscene. In protest, the production's director and cast mounted a reading in front of an audience made up primarily of literary critics.

One of the last works Testori published in his lifetime is Gli angeli dello sterminio, a novel built around two narratives. In the first, a young woman confronts the otherworldly voice of her brother, who died in a motorcycle accident. In the second narrative, a mysterious upper-class woman is interviewed by a reporter about a prison fire that has virtually destroyed Milan. "The 'avenging angels' of the title are motorcycle gangs roaming the desolate streets," noted Pallotta. "It is the end of the world, and as the [lady] tells the reporter, it has come swiftly and unexpectedly." The Dictionary of Literary Biography essayist concluded that in the half century between the publication of Il dio di Roserio and Gli angeli dello sterminio, Testori "never lost faith in the ability of literature to afford a revealing vision of society. Testori's short stories and novels … do not record all of the important aspects of Italian culture during those fifty years, but [they do] offer valuable testimony about two of the most significant: the abject poverty and the quest for material prosperity of the 1950s and the deep social crisis of the last two decades of the twentieth century."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 177: Italian Novelists since World War II, 1945–1965, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1997.

PERIODICALS

Artforum, December, 1988, review of In exitu, p. 110.

World Literature Today, winter, 1985, review of Ossa mea (1981–1982), p. 74; summer, 1989, review of In exitu, p. 465.

OBITUARIES

New York Times, March 18, 1993.