Born in Turin in 1917, Armando Testa attended the Vigliardi Paravia School of Graphic Design where he met Ezio D'Errico, the abstract painter, who introduced him into the world of modern art which from then on was one of his passions. In 1937, when he was twenty, he won his first contest, a poster with a geometric design created for the ICI typographical colours firm. After the war he worked for important firms like Martini & Rossi, Carpano, Borsalino and Pirelli. He also worked as an illustrator for publishers and created a small graphics studio. In 1956, the Studio Testa was born, dedicated to advertising, not just graphics, but also TV which was in its infancy in those years in Italy. Some of the firms that used the Studio Testa very soon became leaders in their sectors: Lavazza, Sasso olive oil, Carpano, Simmenthal, Lines. In 1958 he won an international contest for the official poster of the 1960 Rome Olympics. However a short time after, Testa's poster was refused and a second contest was run. He won that one also. Between the Fifties and the Seventies, Testa produced filmed scenes and animations for TV which have remained an integral part of the story of advertising, linked to slogans that became part of everyday language: the graphic play on black/white and positive/negative for the Antonetto liqueur (1960); the perfect geometry of the sphere suspended above a half sphere for the aperitif Punt e Mes, which means "a point and a half" in the Piedmont dialect (1960); t...
Born in Turin in 1917, Armando Testa attended the Vigliardi Paravia School of Graphic Design where he met Ezio D'Errico, the abstract painter, who introduced him into the world of modern art which from then on was one of his passions. In 1937, when he was twenty, he won his first contest, a poster with a geometric design created for the ICI typographical colours firm. After the war he worked for important firms like Martini & Rossi, Carpano, Borsalino and Pirelli. He also worked as an illustrator for publishers and created a small graphics studio. In 1956, the Studio Testa was born, dedicated to advertising, not just graphics, but also TV which was in its infancy in those years in Italy. Some of the firms that used the Studio Testa very soon became leaders in their sectors: Lavazza, Sasso olive oil, Carpano, Simmenthal, Lines. In 1958 he won an international contest for the official poster of the 1960 Rome Olympics. However a short time after, Testa's poster was refused and a second contest was run. He won that one also. Between the Fifties and the Seventies, Testa produced filmed scenes and animations for TV which have remained an integral part of the story of advertising, linked to slogans that became part of everyday language: the graphic play on black/white and positive/negative for the Antonetto liqueur (1960); the perfect geometry of the sphere suspended above a half sphere for the aperitif Punt e Mes, which means "a point and a half" in the Piedmont dialect (1960); the conical cartoon characters Caballero and Carmencita for Lavazza's Paulista coffee (1965); the spherical inhabitants of the planet Papalla for Philco (1966); Pippo the blue hippopotamus for Lines diapers (1966-1967); and then, the actor Mimmo Craig tackling the nightmares of obesity to the music of Grieg for Sasso olive oil (1968) and the charming blond, Solvi Stubing, for Peroni beer (1968). The first institutional recognition of his work was an invitation to take the chair of Design and Press Composition at the Turin University of Science and Technology from 1965 to 1971. In 1968 he received the Gold Medal from the Ministry of Culture for his contribution to Visual Art, then in 1975 the Italian Advertising Federation awarded him the Gold Medal for Merit in recognition of his successes in foreign countries. In 1978 the Studio Testa became Armando Testa S.p.A. which in the following years opened offices in Milan and Rome, continuing to initial incredibly successful advertising campaigns. From the mid Eighties, in addition to traditional advertising, Testa focussed on creating posters for events and institutions with cultural and social commitments - from Amnesty International to the Red Cross, from the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto to the Teatro Regio of Turin. Testa also created the emblems that mark cultural bodies like the Salone del Libro, the Festival of Young Cinema in Turin, and the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art. His agency becomes the largest of all those operating in Italy in the advertising sector, and has offices in the most important European countries. In the Eighties and Nineties he concentrates on freely creative graphics and pictorial research By now, advertising is studied as an autonomous form of expression and communication, and various Italian and foreign institutions have anthological exhibitions dedicated to Testa, and which often include his pictorial works. Not to be forgotten are the Milan Pavilion of Contemporary Art in 1984, the Mole Antonelliana in Turin in 1985, the Parson School of Design Exhibition Center in New York in 1987, the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid in 1989, Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, the Israel Museum in 1993, the Castle of Rivoli in 2001, Castel Sant'Elmo in Naples in the same year and, finally, the London Institute of Culture in 2004. His works are part of important collections in museums like the MOMA in New York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, The Israel Museum of Jerusalem, the Centre for Studies and Archives of Communication at the University of Parma and numerous other international Institutions. In 1989 he became an "Honor Laureate" at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Armando Testa died in Turin on March 20, 1992, three days before his 75th birthday.
