In misfortune, I was lucky

Goffredo Fofi

With his characteristic simplicity and frankness, Lele Luzzati recounts how he became a 'theatre painter' during the war years, starting with his exile in Lausanne. A forced exile following the racial fascist laws in November 1938. Born in Genoa in 1921, in love with his city, Luzzati was sent to Lausanne by his parents at the age of 17 to keep him away from an aberrant and traumatic situation.
His first love had been painting. But this was not enough for him, as, we believe, he needed community and companionship. And, as he would soon learn from his first study and work experiences, he was driven by a specific vocation for the applied arts. With the memory of his mother's teachings (patchwork of various materials) and his schooling, he was above all motivated by inexhaustible curiosity and desire to work in a team, which fascinated all those who got to know him.
« Despite the memory of the tragedies that we had all experienced and were somehow touched by, in many ways, the years of reconstruction were exciting years. After burying and mourning the many dead, a new time had to be invented, in a climate of democracy and hope that was contagious also for those who, like me, were still young children at the time of the Nazi occupation of Italy» (Rita Cirio, Dipingere il teatro, Edizioni Laterza, Rome-Bari, 2000).
Genoa-Lausanne. Apprenticeship and first work experiences. Discovering the world and his own potential, challenging himself with the fascinating world of theatre. And finally, two masters: first Sergio Tofano and then Christian Bérard. The former was not only a draftsman, but also an author and director, known first and foremost as a theatre and cinema actor (the “Telefoni bianchi” films) and as the inventor of Mr. Bonaventura. The latter was a brilliant theatre and cinema set designer, nicknamed Bébé because he was a peaceful and plump guy, and a great collaborator of Jouvet, Barrault, Cocteau... Drawing and cutting out, gluing and animating, and doing so for the theatre, at a time when modern theatrical set design was finally developed, after decades of simply painted backdrops and fixed stage sets.

Alberto Savinio, another great and multifaceted man – he was a painter, writer, musician, and much more – used to say that the theatre was "the colourful adventure"! He might have met or known Luzzati in those years, when important theatre plays were not only put on stage in Milan (Strehler and Grassi) and Rome (Visconti, Costa), but were also performed elsewhere, in traditional theatre tours. And the experiences of our beloved Luzzati – a social man par excellence – were those of a poet with a great practical spirit, an artist with a great artisanal spirit, a creator of stories with a great, shall we say, childlike spirit... Actually, I only saw him and spoke to him once, but I still have an affectionate letter he wrote to me when I happened to write about his work.

Tofano, just like the great French mimes (Decroux, Marceau, Barrault, Lecocq) was certainly like this too: each time they would reinvent an essential and at the same time total language, for an apparently very simple communication which, instead, is the densest and most complex of all.
Luzzati was not an actor. Actually, those who knew him say that he could have just as well been one, in the wake of the above mentioned mimes. But he knew how to lend his need for harmony and figurative grace to the movement of animated drawing, in particular to the skillful movement that makes his drawings and fixed scenes a joy to behold, often combined with the beauty of great music.

From Lausanne to Genoa, and from Genoa to Italy, faithful to the very strong roots between his Italian and Jewish traditions, we would like to imagine Luzzati in the background of his most Ligurian, most Genoese theater sets. He would move among them with the simplicity of a child, the skill of a craftsman, and the attitude of a true poet.

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