“The calm of a place that is neither home, nor studio, nor gallery. It is a space in which to 'host' exchange”. Corrado Levi, an artist and writer, an assistant architect to Albini who has been teaching at the Milan Polytechnic since the years of the greatest changes, a protagonist of the homosexual liberation struggle fight before the days of the F.U.O.R.I. (the first Italian gay liberation front) and of multiple seasons of art that could come across Carol Rama as well as American street art, has been an important presence on Domus since the 80s. In July 1984, on issue 652, Rosa Maria Rinaldi drew a portrait of him through the spaces that, at the time, represented him: against a rather stereotypical concept of domesticity that was making a comeback in those years, the resulting image is that of a non-home, made up of movement and interactions.
From oil to the toy aeroplane
Corrado Levi is a European artist. Art critic, collector, professor of architectural design at the faculty of architecture in the Milan Politechnic and ex-assistant to Franco Albini, Levi took several exams in Turin under Carlo Mollino, who had a very high opinion of him. Corrado Levi as an artist does not choose himself, but others. Artists and non-artists to be loved and followed patiently, with enthusiasm. Unorthodox artists working off the traditional tracks, as disc-jockeys in smart discotheques who cut their hair like clever artists; young inventors and talented designers, people still free from the bottlenecks of fame. His choice is attentive and rigorous, on the same lines as the methodology he uses or the theoretic side of his university teaching.
There are two parallel and indispensable levels, Levi says: theory is very important and cannot be sidestepped. The same goes for happiness and intuition. So on the one hand you get Rammelzee, Carol Rama, Alighiero Boetti, Schifano, Carla Accardi, De Pisis... On the other hand the subtle and constant search elsewhere for the foundations of architecture.
The emphasis on painting is over. Information is the new merchandise to be exchanged. In America exchange is the basis of new knowledge contracts. In America a small hôtel in New York, East Side Village, was where Levi stayed on his first trip. A place divided into a number of small, similar rooms with showers at one end. The first exchanges.
In Milan, no home. Instead, a car, in which he spends part of his time working, thinking; and the hospitality of a friend. Elsewhere, the anonymous welcome of a city residence. He no longer whises to be surrounded by favourite objects, furniture and art works, which can become a hindrance to the smooth course of existence. After removal of references and consensus, far from emotions and cosy corners, the emergent victorious desire is to move ither and thither, enveloped in the flux of facts, things and people encountered on the way. Research, exchange, peace of mind.
New York is lovely. But Milan is the only international European city, where perhaps things happen the way they do in New York, where information is perhaps exchanged. The other state, like being elsewhere, means for Corrado Levi “living” momentarily in a studio where he can let information circulate freely. An almost underground “loft”, buried in a country courtyard extraneous to the metropolis, where the architecture merges with its lowest backcloths, the same ones that allow you to remain poised between art and other things, between elite and outcast.
The privilege of a madness conquered, as shiny as the gay friend to whom Corrado sent a beautiful letter, as polished as the tar by Stoisa, interviewed by Levi. “From oil to the toy aeroplane”: an opportunity to host twenty artists in the “other state”. But there could have been many more of them; you need only look around to discover works of quality.