Franco Testa was born, and works, in Ascoli Piceno. Having graduated from the Ascoli Piceno Institute of Arts and having qualified for teaching, he spent several years as a teacher of Plastic Decoration in Castelli, in L'Aquila and in Ascoli Piceno. After initial figurative experiences he started an iconographic research into Pop and Optical Arts. In more recent years colour has been the favourite motif of his compositions, the range of reds in particular and, amongst these, the "Pompeian red" has become a symbol of a time crossing, in the sense that it tends to dematerialize into a pure memory data that, nonetheless, does not rub out the historical reference and whateven behavioural rites and sensual blandishments belong to it. Franco Testa has taken part in several exhibitions in Italy and abroad with high praises for the originality of his proposals.
Copyright 2007 Franco Testa
Rosso Pompeiano
Red Pompeiano
by
Franco Testa
Paleochromatic emersions
by Carlo Melloni
Since over a decade Franco Testa's pictorial research is proving to be a kind of hide-and-seek game between form and colour - form moving from interiorized cultural choices (the anti-academy, to start with), whilst the contribution of colour is complementary to that of form being the precipitate of a time-defying symbolism that nonetheless stays within a project that implies it. And not only so, for it derives syllogistically from it.