My First Seven Years (Plus a Few More)

CHAPTER 26. Waiting for Picasso

I was in my second year at the Brera Academy and had chosen the course on frescos with Achille Funi, an extraordinary teacher. Every so often, Carrà, a highly likable as well as talented man, would take the class. In the post-war period, all the academic conventions and rules had been set aside: any student was free to go to any class and follow an entire lesson without fear of being asked to leave. So it was that every so often I would turn up in the principal lecture hall where the sculpture instructor was Marino Marini. On another occasion, I managed to get into the studio of Giacomo Manzoni, better known as Manzù, to fashion clay on the lathe, to help in the operations of casting plaster and fusing moulds. There was no timetable: it was permitted to carry on working even after six o’clock in the evening … not in all classrooms, obviously. In Perspective, that is in the School of Stage Design, it was possible to enter even after dinner, right up until night-time. The director of this genuinely free academy was Aldo Carpi, recently returned in poor physical condition from the Matthausen labour camp. He had always shown himself to be a man of extraordinary cultural and civil openness, a true example of what is meant by ‘free ideas’.

My companions at the academy included Morlotti, Peverelli, Alik Cavaliere, Bobo Piccoli, Parzini, all of whom would make a certain name for themselves in succeeding years. I was not aware of it, but I was living in a really extraordinary and unrepeatable moment of our history, from both the political and cultural point of view. Among the trattorias and osterias of Via Fiori Chiari and Via Fiori Scuri, interspersed with the occasional brothel, there were colourful shops and bars like the Jamaica and Le Sorelle Pirovini. At any moment you could run into people of great importance: writers, theatre and cinema directors who later became famous. I often found myself seated at the same table as them in the Fiori Chiari, eating plates of badly cooked and badly flavoured pasta. But nobody minded. The only complainants were our stomachs.

We talked about everything, about the political situation, about stage sets, about the Italian and foreign books which we were finally able to read after twenty years of Fascist censorship. We did not have much money, often we had to tighten our belts or live on what we could borrow, but I have never lived in such a climate of carefree rumbustiousness as in those days and at that level.

* * *

Often, while we were in the Jamaica having a sandwich, my friends would encourage me to tell them some new tale, and there was no escape, even when I was not in the mood. By now I had put together a considerable repertoire, mainly of pieces with some reference to current affairs, but also of caricatures of our professors and great teachers whose mythical obsessions, generosity and meanness were well known to us. One of the most frequently requested satires was on Carrà. I invited them to imagine the Master intent on painting one of his famous beaches with its brightly coloured cabins, and in the background the sea and a bather running along the waterline pursued by a playful dog jumping in the air. Carrà scratches the figure of the dog off the canvas three times: he cannot get it right. Finally he asks his wife to act as model: ‘Get into the right pose, on all fours, please … that’s it … just like that … now make a gesture of leaping … try harder … paws up … yelp a little. Pity you don’t have a tail.’ Obviously, in this case, the situation was ironical and had little to do with reality, unlike in others, such as the one which satirised the behaviour of De Chirico. The most requested sketch was the one in which I performed dialogues between various characters, the merchant who begs the Master to reproduce his most famous masterpieces from his metaphysical period. De Chirico fends him off, but sets to work with the help of a pupil once he has fixed the price. Here was the Master of metaphysics seized by a creative impulse, painting at top speed and reproducing the same subject on four different canvases. As though he were on an assembly line, he is overwhelmed by his own demonic rhythm and slaps paint over the pupil and the merchant who is standing by, desperate for the ‘merchandise’. At this point, as he evaluates the result, the Master decides to introduce into the four copies some variants on the original, the famous piazza in Ferrara with the castle, the towers and the heightened perspective sloping down to the sea. ‘Here we are, I’ll add an extra tower, and instead of the grey sea, I’ll put in a nice green, stormy sea. I could trick this one out with some little pyramids in the background and a yacht out at sea. On this one, I could do a female nude: Dido Abandoned. On the sea, we could have a ship sinking beneath the waves.’ The whole thing, obviously, recounted with mime gestures to suggest the frenzy of his painting.

Everything is ready.

But having several times altered the sequence of his paintings, the Master can no longer remember which is the original, particularly since, in the confusion, he has painted over it as well. Finally, he piles up the paintings one on top of the other as though they were a pack of cards, and gets his dog, obviously blindfolded, to pull it out of the pack with his teeth.

* * *

But I did not always perform on my own. Often Emilio Tadini came to my aid and took over with his splendid repertoire of old Neapolitan numbers, accompanying himself on the guitar. Then Busnelli, a born acrobat, would execute on the spot, in the middle of the street, his own incredible series of cartwheels. But the greatest fun we had came from the big practical jokes we devised, like the one we set up to celebrate Pablo Picasso and his first visit to Milan. An extraordinary affair!

A group including Morlotti, Peverelli and others had managed to arrange a meeting with the great Master in his atelier in Paris. Picasso greeted them with great cordiality. It was known that the Galleria Manzoni in Milan was about to reopen with an exhibition of many works by the Spanish Master. When invited to come to Milan for the inauguration, Picasso had replied: ‘I might be able to manage, but I can’t give any guarantees.’

A few journalists, desperate for a scoop at any cost, got to know about the conversation in Paris, and quite calmly wrote that Picasso’s arrival in Milan for the opening could be regarded as a done deal.

Other newspapers picked up the story, which was then broadcast on the radio. We, in our turn, decided to do our bit for the supreme artist: ‘We’ll see to it that he really does come. Picasso will be in Milan in flesh and blood.’

The cornerstone of our project was Otello, the janitor at the Brianza, who helped out with casting operations in Marino Marini’s studio. Around fifty years old, squat in stature, robust in build, skull embellished with stray wisps of white hair and face identical to that of the leader of the Cubist school. In other words, the spitting image of Picasso.

It was decided. We coaxed the janitor to join our game. By the purest good fortune, Otello had worked for ten years in Marseilles and spoke near-perfect French. Picasso is to arrive on the 11.30 Paris-Milan express. We spread the news through the agencies and gave it directly to the radio and newspapers. We got hold of a white trench coat and made our janitor put it on. We turned up at the Stazione Garibaldi a good hour early and made him, accompanied by Alix Cavaliere, Morlotti and Bobo Picccoli, get on the train for Gallarate. At the station at Rho, they got off and waited for the train from Menton, which was due to stop, as it always does, at that junction of the four lines.

At the Central Station in Milan, platform ten, there was a great crowd: journalists, photographers, newsreel cameramen, students, artists and intellectuals. There was even one red flag.

The train drew in and the crowd surged forward to greet the artist.

‘Do you think he’ll be in the first coach or nearer the back?’

The passengers got off.

‘Did you catch sight of Picasso in one of the carriages?’

The train was emptying. No sign of Picasso.

‘There he is!’

Yes, it was him all right. He leaned out of a window, gave a wave then disappeared and got off at the platform opposite. ‘He’s an original, eh!’

People climbed aboard to get off on the other side. He’d vanished.

‘He must have slipped into an underground passage.’

The photographers and journalists gave chase. A voice called out. ‘Take it easy, he’s not run away. It’s just that the sight of a crowd makes him panic. If you want to meet him, come along this evening to the rooms of the Filodrammatici theatre company, beside La Scala. There’ll certainly be refreshments as well as a more relaxed press conference which promises to be historic.’

The Filodrammatici space was a kind of hangar used as a rehearsal room. They were restoring it, so it was crammed with scaffolding and planks under a pseudo art nouveau style cupola, but the iron structures were also ideal for hanging the back-cloths of a stage set. For this purpose, we had enrolled stage-design students and a couple of set designers from the Piccolo Teatro. They had procured some unneeded materials from past productions: a couple of papier maché statues, a dragon and rearing horse, all on wheels. The first to turn up that evening were the musicians from Santa Tecla, who took up their position on a raised platform while the lights were still being put in place. Not long after, a group of girls from the Scuola Lambro Dance made their appearance, prancing about and trying out the parquet flooring with their footwork.

Finally, people started to arrive. We were busy putting out the seats in a truly chaotic order. The Santa Tecla band struck up a well-known piece — All God’s Children Gotta Shoes.

There were more people than we had expected, including some very well turned-out ladies. Many of them had plainly deserted the first night at the opera. Schwarz, the king of art dealers, was there with his whole court. The audience was not quite seated before the first of the comic turns took place: up above, clinging onto the scaffolding, a painter in a white overall started screaming for help. It was Busnelli doing a bit of clowning: he let himself slide down a wire, then began to sway wildly backwards and forwards. He’s falling! No, he’s clutching a plank. Some firemen, among whom I made out some young actors from the Fantasio Piccoli troupe, clambered up a ladder. They told the audience to stand close to the walls: ‘It’s dangerous,’ they shout, ‘clear the centre of the hall.’ In fact one set of ladders did fall, yet miraculously did not crash to the ground but remained dangling from a rope. The rearing horse on wheels came careering towards the audience, followed by the dragon spinning on itself. The carousel created havoc and some of the ladies uttered shrill screams which tuned in perfectly with the jangle of sounds coming from the orchestra’s saxophones and trumpets.

One of the guests, jumping out of the dragon’s way, asked in a loud voice: ‘When is Picasso coming?’

‘Relax! He’ll be here any moment.’

A siren was heard and a door was flung open: from the far end of the hall, a policeman on his motor-bicycle made his entrance and asked for silence: ‘What is this madhouse? Have we all gone off our heads? Do you have permission for this show? Who is the director, the producer? Can you tell me what you’re doing here?’

‘We’re waiting for Pablo Picasso.’

‘Pablo’s coming here?’ whinnied the motorcycle policeman. He let out a scream, revved up his bike, then sped off at top speed, nearly knocking over the dancing girls, who leapt into the arms of the firemen-clowns.

* * *

The orchestra was getting more and more frenzied. Five painters and decorators entered and made out that they were there to get on with the work. I was one of these clown-painters. We dragged in an enormous canvas, the kind used to throw over furniture to protect it from dripping paint, and forced the audience to file under it. Two elderly ladies asked loudly: ‘But when is Picasso due?’

‘He’s coming, he’s coming.’

Meantime, the decorators had taken to throwing buckets at each other, soaking themselves with lashings of paint (of course, it was the usual coloured soap). A large part of the audience now got the joke and joined in: many girls grabbed hold of the canvas covering and started shaking it about. No one paid any heed to the splashes of the painted soap any longer, apart from some ladies who lamented: ‘Oh no! That’s enough of this paint. When’s Picasso going to arrive?’

‘He’s coming, he’s coming.’

The orchestra struck up a triumphal march, the trumpets blared out a thunderous entrance tune worthy of a circus, and fireworks went off.

‘Right, Picasso’s finally arrived!’

And there he was. Through the smoke and bangs, the profile of Otello, still in his white trench coat, could be made out.

Applause.

‘It really is him!’

Otello was about to speak: ‘Mes amis, je suis ravi d’être ici…’

One of the firemen-clowns was holding on to a large water pipe, which split apart. Disaster! A jet of water of apocalyptic proportions poured down on us. We were all soaked.

Picasso yelled out: Ah no, fuck it!’

Rush for the exits … some oaths, but much laughter. A splendid, very wet lady, who seemed to be emerging from the waves after a shipwreck, appeared contented enough but was heard to make the comment: ‘I’ll remember this occasion as long as I live. But was that really Picasso?’