The Missoni genius and the little girl on her bicycle: When colour appeared in Gallarate

Ersilia is fourteen years old, she finished the fifth grade and she rides her bicycle from the centre of Gallarate.  She stops in front of a block of flats near the motorway and reads a sign: A textile workshop is looking for workers. “She has been with us for forty years, she has become a talent that the whole world envied us.”

 

The person who is talking is Rosita Missoni, 89, and the factory where Ersilia came, in those far days of 1950s, was the very first workshop of the famous Missoni fashion house.

Rosita tells her story at the presentation of the new installation in the Sala degli Arazzi, with which the Maga museum celebrates the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Ottavio Missoni, the other half of a bright couple.

 

But the anecdote also tells something about the close bond between Missoni and the city of Gallarate. An industrial city where Ottavio’s artistic genius (as seen later) meets a local tradition – textile industry – which consist also in personal stories, other families, a knowledge that is that of Ersilia too.

 

Interviewed by Emma Zanella, director of the museum, Rosita and her son Luca Missoni recounted the origin of that relationship: the preparation of tapestries also tells – in one section – of Ottavio’s sporting prowess.  “Which is why everything was born in Gallarate,” says Luca. These were the years in which the industrialist Franco Testa had revived the Società Ginnastica Gallaratese, “which was to become the best sports club in Italy” and which welcomed the young Dalmatian with the great stride (evoked in an original way in the Tapestry Room) into its ranks.

 

Testa also accompanied Ottavio Missoni to the London Olympics, where the future entrepreneur and fashion designer won the bronze medal. It was in London that Ottavio met Rosita Jelmini for the first time, then sixteen years old, the daughter of friends of the Testa family: a meeting recalled with curious anecdotes during the exhibition at the museum, which you can retrace in the video at the end of the article.

The new exhibition helps to retrace Ottavio’s artistic journey, in his bond – more than with manufacture – with the material that becomes pure art, removed even from any market logic. “At a certain point he no longer wanted to sell them, but rather give them away” Luca recalled. “Today, with the Foundation, we are trying to bring them back to life.”

This is the spirit that animates the Sala degli Arazzi, which was born from the “Missoni Arte e Colore” exhibition from 2015 and has also become a recognised place, used by international companies but also by the city where the Missoni story – no longer one individual, but a family – began.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=266519495054979

Translated by Vittoria Bonanomi and Riccardo Bianchi

Reviewed by Prof. Robert Clarke