Gemma De Angelis Testa

Pepi Marchetti FranchiWe’ve known each other for many years, and what struck me about you from the beginning was your extraordinary and rare perspective on the art world, seen as an ecosystem that artists, museums, art historians, gallery owners, and collectors all contribute to keeping healthy and vital. I’d like to start by trying to understand where this inclusive yet determined and enterprising spirit of yours comes from.

Gemma TestaI had the privilege of being married to a very special man, Armando Testa [the Turin-born, award-winning graphic designer, cartoonist, animator, and painter]. A “cultural obsessive,” he knew everything, and never stopped talking about art and everything that struck him from the moment he woke up. It could be the latest film by Woody Allen or Massimo Troisi, but it could also be the architect or the director of the moment, as well as the neighbor next door.

It was fun but demanding. He immediately involved me in his work, and the “exams” never ended. He enjoyed provoking and teasing me, and every time we talked about art, I became impassioned. We had many common interests that allowed us to overcome the age difference, and art was our glue. Love of art gave me a set of tools that, combined with study, allowed me to exchange opinions with him on equal terms, even openly supporting artists he did not like. I often say that the years I spent with him were magical; it was like living in a film projected at high speed, and even today I still hear its echo. Armando came from art, and he always referred to the visual arts in his work. This way of seeing artworks was transmitted to me. He knew how to adopt every medium and technique in an experimental and innovative key, appropriating suggestions from art history and the mass media to elaborate a seductive personal universe. In short, a total artist capable of exploring the plurality of languages and means typical of our creative era, which is why the art historian Gillo Dorfles called him a “global visualizer.”

PMFTell us about the beginnings of your activity as a collector.

GTArmando immediately sensed that my interest in art would lead me toward collecting, but he insisted, “The walls of the house are white and must stay that way. Paintings are to be looked at in museums and galleries.” I understood that the presence of artworks in our home would distract him from his work. Furthermore, even if he’d wanted to, our house in Turin had very few walls; it had large windows all around, so much so that it felt like living in an aquarium. For my part, at every exhibition, I was flooded with emotion: I felt freedom, I thought everything was possible, and I wanted to share that pleasure with as wide an audience as possible. Enjoying and dreaming, I realized that I felt more strongly about giving than about receiving. That love has grown stronger over the years and is still with me today.

At the time, unable to collect, I enjoyed putting together my “ideal collection” in my head. White was the dominant color; the works were full of stories, thoughts, new ways to contact the soul, together creating a mystical, suspended atmosphere. In addition to Cy Twombly, there were Lucio Fontana’s slashed works, Piero Manzoni’s Achromes, and the white-on-white monochromes of the Minimalist Robert Ryman. In 1982, after years of daily fantasizing and imagining, I put my savings together and independently acquired a Twombly. Armando loved Fontana’s gesture and the restless, vigorous brushstrokes of the great Abstract Expressionists, but Twombly was too romantic and delicate for him, although he eventually came to love him. Even before seeing works by Twombly, I was able to see several Fontana exhibitions, with one in particular, at a gallery in Milan, leaving me dazzled. It was all white canvases with slashes of different sizes; the physicality of the color had a purity that I would describe as incorruptible. That time nothing came of it, but the urgent desire to start collecting contemporary art was already born in me.

PMFHow do you think the art world has changed, and how has your modus operandi developed over the years? Do you think the challenges for those starting this journey today are new and different?

GTThere are many more art lovers now, and approaching collecting is simpler than before because there are more channels through which people can inform themselves about what’s happening, even on an international level. Today it’s easier for a newcomer to move into the worlds of collecting and artists, but it isn’t always equally easy to grasp the complexity of the thinking in art, which often isn’t deep enough in new collectors. Putting in time is a necessary investment and a challenge. Also, large collections often remain private, and are only temporarily shared with the public. My methods haven’t changed over the years: I still don’t follow trends, keeping my emotional relationship with artworks alive both as a collector and as a frequent visitor to exhibitions and museums.

PMFYou’ve said that your first major encounter with contemporary art was at the thirty-fifth Venice Biennale, in 1970. What are your memories of that visit and its impact on you? How do you experience the Biennale today?

GTI was struck by the energy of the Russian avant-garde, which I didn’t know well at the time: László Moholy Nagy, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Vladimir Tatlin, El Lissitzky, they all impressed me. I was moved by Kazimir Malevich’s primary forms of the cross, the circle, and the white square on a white ground. I still think today about how current Rodchenko is, beautiful, strong, versatile, and brilliant—he knew how to work in different forms across all the mediums and techniques of his time in an experimental and innovative key. His research influenced contemporary artists just as Armando’s work would years later. I adored them all, immediately.

On that occasion, Armando told me about Alberto Burri’s despair, Fontana’s slashes, and the poetics of arte povera. He surprised me by pointing out the colors and designs of Venice, the decorations, the views, the colors of the mooring poles of the gondolas, those spiral bands that descend from the top. His way of telling me things enchanted me; I had never heard things described in such a cultured and original way. Even today, going to the Biennale always provokes emotion and curiosity in me. In recent years when we’ve traveled less, I’ve felt the importance of artworks as bearers of messages even more, and the Venice occasion remains a unique opportunity to explore the diversity of the art world.

PMFLast year you donated a significant part of your collection to Venice’s Ca’ Pesaro Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna. How did the desire to share with the public the works you’ve acquired over the years emerge in you? How important is it that your collection has found a home in Venice, and in particular at Ca’ Pesaro?

GTFor me, the experience of art is more enriching when it’s shared, which is why I’ve always believed that collectors shouldn’t guard their works jealously but should make them available to the community. I believe in the importance of collaboration between private individuals and institutions, and I’ve always thought of my collection in museum terms. The first works I acquired, in the early 1990s, by artists such as Ettore Spalletti, Tony Cragg, Marlene Dumas, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Jan Vercruysse, and Francesco Vezzoli, I made long-term loans to the Castello di Rivoli, outside Turin. With two other collectors I was able to provide the museum with a room entirely dedicated to Anselm Kiefer, an artist who at the time was not represented in any Italian museum. Over the years, I’ve provided other museums with various artworks on loan.

Venice is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and it’s given me the two most important encounters of my life: with my husband, Armando Testa, and with contemporary art. So I couldn’t imagine a city more suitable to my collection, which I didn’t want to break up—I wanted to keep it the way it had formed, leaving its narrative intact. I’ve always thought that these works should be shown in a museum because there’s nothing more beautiful than the possibility of sharing the emotions that art gives us with everyone.

PMFThe museum chose not to follow a chronological layout but to integrate the 105 works you donated into the route through the galleries. As Ca’ Pesaro chief curator Elisabetta Barisoni has emphasized, this creates evocative juxtapositions that launch bridges between different periods and cultural contexts. There’s a mutual enrichment and nourishment between contemporary art and the art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Did you contribute to the layout? Are there works for which you had specific requests in terms of placement and juxtaposition? What do you find particularly successful?

GTIn my work and research, I’ve always tried to create a dialogue between art and the present, enjoying connecting artists who are very different from each other in style and content. The collection I donated to Ca’ Pesaro reflects this spirit of embracing different worlds, and I think the layout proposed by Gabriella Belli and Elisabetta Barisoni, with whom I discussed ideas on various occasions, was able to reflect its essence and the principle of elective affinities, the guiding theme of my collecting. There were works that required adjustments and whose placement was particularly delicate, such as Paola Pivi’s Perle [Pearls, 1999] and Ai Weiwei’s Colored Vases [2014], four precious terra-cotta vases from the Han dynasty [206 BC–220 AD]. But the final overall layout seems very successful to me, with unprecedented juxtapositions capable of stimulating the visitor into new readings. If I had to express a preference, my favorite might be the first room, whose poetics particularly touch me, with works by Twombly, Mario Airò, Ghada Amer, Gino De Dominicis, Robert Rauschenberg, and Armando Testa.

PMFYou could be described as an activist for contemporary art, which you support through various initiatives, including the prominent award promoted by the ACACIA association, which you conceived. Can you tell us how that idea was born, and how it continues to develop?

GTIt was born with the goal of supporting Italian art and artists while promoting the establishment of a public museum of contemporary art in Milan through constant dialogue with the city’s institutions. ACACIA operates on the philosophy of collective patronage, working concretely to promote, preserve, and protect contemporary art. Proceeding from this perspective, we’ve established a collection, still in progress, of thirty-seven works by twenty-five Italian artists that we’ve donated to the Museo del Novecento in Milan.

The main tool through which the association works is the ACACIA Award, awarded annually to young Italian artists who are established on the international scene in recognition of their work. In 2014, for example, we gave the prize to Tatiana Trouvé for her work I tempi doppi [Double time, 2013]. It’s a formally essential sculpture, a bronze and copper cable with a light bulb at each end, one on, the other off and painted black. It’s a work that evokes light and darkness, in which time flows without repeating itself, according to a principle and an end. The title evokes a point of contact between the memory of time and the present moment. In addition to the award, we work constantly to offer our members and the general public visits to major exhibitions, conferences, and other moments of in-depth study of contemporary art.

PMFIf you were to identify a recurring theme or common thread in the works in your collection, what might they be? Were you aware of them at the time of each acquisition, or was it an awareness that came later?

GTMy collection wasn’t carefully planned; I’ve never followed any specific scheme. The common thread that binds the works is given by the reading and the representation of contemporaneity that the artists offer. As I said, I like to put artists from different eras in conversation, following a principle of affinity; it comes naturally to me to create connections between them. Only over the years, and as the collection has grown, have I realized that there are themes, keys to reading, that link the works in it.

PMFAnd your relationships with artists? And with curators?

GTI’ve always had good relationships with artists, fueled by curiosity about their way of seeing and interpreting the world. I’ve always liked welcoming them and listening to them. My recurring encounters with them are among my most precious memories. Haim Steinbach, for example—during a dinner with him once, I told him about the characters created by Armando, which he then included in a work titled Omaggio ad Armando Testa [Homage to Armando Testa, 1996]. Going back in time, I think of my friendship with Gino De Dominicis; he and Armando had a great deal of respect for each other, and it was a great sorrow when he passed away. I adore Kiefer and his art, and when I had more time, I followed him from exhibition to exhibition; I own several of his works, and I’m happy to have donated two of them to the Ca’ Pesaro.

I’ve met a number of curators over the years, and have maintained relationships with some of them. In my work, I’ve often found myself in conversation with important international curators, and my exchanges with them have given me stimuli and ideas for new projects. I’ve met Jeffrey Deitch several times, for example, and he wrote a beautiful text about Armando for the Castello di Rivoli exhibition in 2001. His sensitivity allowed him to grasp the aspects of Armando’s work that put him in dialogue with the artistic currents he both saw and anticipated; Jeffrey was able to underline his role as an innovator. In short, he understood Armando. Some collaborations have continued and evolved over time, as in the case of Germano Celant, who curated one of Armando’s most important exhibitions, at the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, in 1993. In my memory, the image of Germano is linked to the happy years when Armando was still here. Our meetings often took place casually, maybe crossing West Broadway in New York, or in the museums and galleries of Turin, Milan, and Paris. I remember a certain irony with which, completely confidentially, we commented on particular art world events.

PMFIs there any memory you’d like to share?

GTAs far as artists go, I remember the pleasure of meeting Ed Ruscha, whom you introduced me to in Rome in 2014, on the occasion of his solo exhibition at Gagosian. In honor of the artist, a dinner was organized in the halls of the seventeenth-century Biblioteca Angelica. We started chatting, thanks to you, as you had told him about me and about my purchase some time ago of one of his works, If [1995]. It’s a suggestive acrylic-on-canvas showing a minimal use of the word “if,” with each of the two letters dominating the space inside and outside the canvas. I remember how pleasantly we talked, with the familiarity that usually only comes when you’ve known someone for a long time. I bought that work in a melancholic and introspective moment of my life, and when I look at it, I still find myself asking both positive and negative questions: “If . . . ?” “If . . . ?”

PMFTell us about the exhibition on Armando that you cocurated and that’s currently on view in Venice.

GTIt follows in the footsteps of exhibitions on Armando held over the years in Italy and abroad, but offers a broader view of his art thanks to the perspective of Tim Marlow, director of the Design Museum in London, who curated the project with Elisabetta Barisoni and me. Tim heads a multidisciplinary museum, and his experience in contemporary art and design made him the most suitable person to oversee the project. The exhibition focuses on Armando’s multifaceted artistic production, and particularly on the creative aspects of his work in various media. It’s structured both chronologically and thematically, guiding the visitor through the years of his production of posters, which made him famous and a key figure in the graphic and advertising world; some of the social and cultural campaigns emphasized in the show have never been highlighted before, and also reveal his other side, his irony and playfulness, as well as certain obsessions of his. Other works are shown publicly for the first time, such as the gigantic mural A spanne [In spades, 1982], and some installations were created specifically for the exhibition. And painting, Armando’s first love and constant source of inspiration, occupies a prominent place.