Giovanni Testori, TRAMONTI (SUNSETS)

Room 3

«However, I can assure you that what has always helped me to live, and, moreover, to accept life even in its curse, has always been the return home. You make these outward journeys – which can also be violent, destructive – but then the return home gives the very experience of that exit an inexpressible warmth. Because returning does not mean forgetting, it does not mean shaking off violence and destruction.»
Giovanni Testori

«I saw Giovanni Testori a few times, and only twice in his studio. The first impression was of being in front of a monk. The second time in front of a lifer. In fact, in penitentiaries one often encounters prisoners whom time, working on them, curving them, drying their shoulders, decongesting them and almost discolouring them, has as it were worn out and shrunk them, without completely destroying their ancient strength of complexion. Their faces are serene, their smiles very sweet, and in the clear blue of their eyes the memory of a distant bloody event fades away. A mysterious veneration surrounds them, and somehow makes them privileged and inviolable: beings that heaven has destined to exorcise with crime, with nefariousness, the devils that possess us every day.»
Cesare Garboli