Below the advertiser, the artist. Real. Continues until September 15, 2024, the great monographic exhibition that reconstructs the career of Armando Testa. In the halls of Ca’ Pesaro in Venice, the most famous of his advertising creations are the protagonists. The effect, when visiting the exhibition, is to feel immersed in the creative force of his artistic work. Artist, with hindsight, often ahead of his time. Ca’ Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art in Venice opens its large rooms tohippopotamus Goofy and the posters that made the history of popular costume. But also large murals and obsessive photographs. To curate the exhibition, also the wife Gemma De Angelis Testa.
«Despite having followed all my husband’s exhibitions – she told askanews – every time it is a very strong emotion. This one in a particular way because a foreign, English curator, a museum director, also worked on it, who in any case brought something that perhaps wasn’t there in the other exhibitions. A lightness, a freshness, many things. I find the exhibition to be very touching. He’s there, but he’s here today».
Tim Marlow, director of the, also worked on the curatorship Design Museum, London. «He IS the genius of Testa – he told us he – he can take something and make a very specific point of it. But he also has universal resonance. It is a visual intelligence, a visual poetry. He begins to be an artist as a graphic designer and the two things are very connected.” The strongest sensation, even in the face of the historical icons entered into thecollective imagination, is that the exhibition transports the viewer not into the past, but into a present that also looks to the future. From the point of view of practice, as well as of social awareness of creative work.
Elisabetta Barisoni, director of Ca’ Pesaro: «Absolutely Armando Testa has anticipated the idea that there is no continuity between disciplines. For us, I mean us from my generation onwards, it is quite obvious. This is why young people, who have not experienced him on television, have not experienced him in advertisements, jingles or posters, also like Armando Testa so much. He truly he brought to another dignity lthe idea of the creative, the graphic designer, the advertiser».
«He didn’t feel like an advertiser – Marlow comments – and he could afford the luxury of ambiguity. With theambiguity played with art, but he has always played with advertising too.” And the game works, it’s captivating and strange, some rooms are reassuring, others are more uncomfortable. And in this tangle of ambiguity, the Venetian exhibition becomes interesting and alive.
