From November 21, 2025 to May 3, 2026, the Palazzo delle Papesse in Siena will host a major retrospective exhibition dedicated to Armando Testa (1917-1992), an extraordinary creative genius from Piedmont. The exhibition entitled Armando Testa. Cucù Tetè, curated by Valentino Catricalà and Gemma De Angelis Testa, is produced by Opera Laboratori in collaboration with Galleria Continua and TestaperTesta.
The exhibition aims to offer a never-before-seen perspective on Armando Testa, a figure who profoundly transformed the language of advertising, revealing himself to be among the most influential protagonists of twentieth-century visual culture.
Alongside the most famous posters and characters devised between the 1950s and 1960s-from the digestive Antonetto to the famous “point and a half” of Punt e Mes, from Caballero and Carmencita to Planet Papalla and the very famous Pippo, the blue hippo-the exhibition will also present Testa the painter, experimenter of film techniques and artist. The exhibition aims to highlight how his advertising inventions, which have become iconic images in the collective memory, continue to inspire generations of artists and creative people to this day.
In this way, the retrospective aims to return the portrait of a visionary and multifaceted author, who crossed different fields with originality - from advertising to painting, from television to photography, to sculpture - always maintaining an extraordinary imaginative power.
To complete the exhibition project, a dedicated volume will collect for the first time the texts of the most important scholars who have dealt with Armando Testa - from Gillo Dorfles to Germano Celant - together with testimonies from contemporary artists and archival materials that tell his story and creative legacy.
 |
| In Siena, at the Palazzo delle Papesse, a major retrospective dedicated to Armando Testa |
Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.
