STUDI DI ANATOMIA

Room 7

«Today Gèricault continues to be a point of departure for Testori. His lesson and his memory survive the idea of the anatomical fragment abandoned to itself, a mute interweaving of cut legs and arms. But Testori has taken a step further, he no longer needs butchery. There is no longer any need to cut, to chop off legs and arms and then tie them up in a bow, in a still life in night light. It is enough to paint a genital, to obtain the same effect of mutilation. The anatomical and genital fragment itself is enough. […] The surface cracks, leaving open spaces, crater-like voids of light. And in these spaces the light does not break through, but bursts. […] Light is sucked out of nothing, it is only an intervention of darkness. It is darkness that produces it. In this way, together with their luminosity, forms take shape that are not forms but ectoplasms, ghosts of nipples, breasts, vulvas, buttocks, suddenly materialised as if ready to return precipitously on their steps, to dissolve in the darkness of a well. Absurdly plastic images, absurdly fleshy, because there is no distinction between their form and the glow of their ephemeral and astonished light.»
Cesare Garboli, 1975

In 1975, Testori exhibited a series of large graphite papers with anatomical subjects and sensual fleshy flowers at the historic Galleria del Naviglio in Milan.