INFERA MEDIOLANI

Room 10

At the end of the 1980s, Testori was involved in the city’s debate on the construction of the new cemetery in Novate. It was at this time that he produced some small apocalyptic drawings that foreshadowed the dramatic tenor of the last years of his life, marked by illness. Between 1989 and 1993, Testori was in and out of hospital, but this certainly did not dampen his creative vein which, if anything, received even more energy from his fatigue. Thus, in those years, Testori created numerous writings, often only sketched out, but taken up again until his last days. It was in this context that one of his most important works was born, published posthumously: I Tre Lai.

In June 1991, during a hospitalization at the San Raffaele Hospital, the manuscripts record the preparation of a new collection of short stories, entitled Infera Mediolani and, for the occasion, decorated inscriptions and beautiful drawings reappear among the manuscript pages. The theme dear to Testori’s heart since the 1960s thus returns: a beautiful full-page sunset dates from January 1992, while he was convalescing in Varese, and another of his admissions to the San Raffaele, probably in 1993, is a cycle of eight small sunsets on cardboard. Here the impetuous sea of colour, the forcing of forms, the richness of the drawing and the tessellation of the material are concentrated in a few lines which, ploughing through the white, light up to become lighter.