After the extraordinary success of 2010, the exhibition Giorni Felici a Casa Testori (Happy Days at Casa Testori) is back for the third time, with 22 artists occupying the 22 rooms of Casa Testori in Novate Milanese.
The house, where Giovanni Testori lived, a charming bourgeois villa with garden, reconfirms its vocation as the only Kunsthaus in the area of Milan, according to a model widespread in Europe, becoming a lively creative forge that has seen artists challenge unusual spaces for an exhibition, including the kitchen and bathrooms. The house, rich in history, has been brought back to life through the work of many young people alongside internationally renowned masters.
Giorni Felici wants, with an operation in the full spirit of Testori, to be a driving force for many artists at their debut, giving them the opportunity to exhibit their work in a public place and enliven it in mutual confrontation.
In 2011, the rooms of Casa Testori were inhabited by Arnulf Rainer, to whose Crux Testori dedicated intense poems, by Klaus Mehrkens, an artist strongly linked to the critic, and by Aldo Rossi, testifying to Italy’s creative vitality. Exceptional guests in 2011 include big names on the international art scene: Piero Fogliati, Mario Airò, with a site-specific work capable of transforming the environment into an unusual space, Massimo Uberti with his powerful structures of light, Christiane Löhr with delicate organic constructions and Leonora Hamill, who presented a photographic work developed during a residency, supported by Associazione Testori, at Le Centre Hospitalier de Rouffach in France.
Among the other names that will interpret the rooms of the house in Novate with many site-specific works: Corrado Abate, Davide Baroggi, Emma Ciceri, Marco Di Giovanni, Francesco Di Luca, Michela Forte, Ettore Frani, Piero 1/2botta, Guido Nosari, Agostino Osio, Danielle Sassoon, Elisabetta Tagliabue, Sabrina Mezzaqui, Mario Francesconi, Davide Rivalta.
The exhibition has been promoted and organised by the Associazione Giovanni Testori Onlus, in collaboration with Casa Testori Associazione Culturale, which makes the house a place of meeting and cultural production just a few kilometres from Milan and the Rho-Fiera exhibition centre.