This interview is part of a series of seven interviews on Fuori! (including this one, as well as those with Angelo Pezzana, founder of Fuori!, Maurizio Gelatti, Vice President of the Fondazione Angelo Pezzana-Fuori!, Maurizio Cagliuso, Archivist and Librarian of the Fondazione Angelo Pezzana-Fuori!, and the activists of Fuori!, Enzo Cucco, Anna Cuculo and Vera Fraboni). These interviews were collected during summer 2024 thanks to a Scholarship Catalyst Program grant from Texas Tech University (Office of the President, Office of the Provost, Office of the Vice President for Research) and are to be considered as dedicated to Angelo Pezzana.
Riccardo Rosso is an architect, designer, and was an activist of Fuori! in the early ‘70s.
Thank you, Riccardo, for this interview. In the early ‘70s, you participated in Fuori!. What were the most important moments that you want to remember?
I was a volunteer assistant at the Faculty of Architecture. I graduated in 1965-1966 and then became a volunteer assistant. At that time, I was very interested, as an architect, in a different idea of living in the city. I had several experiences, including an important exhibition at the MoMA in New York. This led me to investigate American society, that was the most dynamic at that time. I went to Angelo Pezzana’s bookstore because he had many American texts, and it was crucial for me to see that something was moving, especially in the United States.
The importance was to realize that Angelo Pezzana and a group of his friends were reflecting on this situation. I was co-opted from the beginning, especially by Angelo Pezzana and Carlo Sismondi, that I respected greatly for their notable preparation.
The most important event, beyond meeting, as well as freely and openly exchanging opinions, was the demonstration against the Congresso Internazionale di Sessuologia, organized by the Centro Italiano di Sessuologia on April 5, 1972. So, this gave us the chance to talk openly about these topics and to realize that there was an international situation in motion and demonstrate in Sanremo.
Obviously, all of this was reflected in the creation of a magazine, a documentation of what was happening and also contacts with other realities, especially in Rome and Milan. These were the fundamental aspects.
Regarding Sanremo, I was struck by Mario Mieli, who presented himself provocatively in terms of clothing and attitude. Mario Mieli showed this side with incredible intelligence and political determination, that fascinated and impressed me greatly. The rest of the group, however, had a more prudish attitude toward gender, meaning that men presented themselves as such, without any hint, and they were quite faraway from what was taking place; for instance, Paolo Poli, instead, had quite a daring attitude about this. Mario Mieli focused heavily on this aspect, so even the actions were more focused and had more openness. Personally, I did not identify much with the transgender aspect, it was not in my nature, but I was interested in it theoretically.
The Fuori! group, even before it became a movement that met, consisted mostly of Angelo’s friends and mine, who got together with a bourgeois intellectual angle. What energized me was that, up until then, even though I was not hiding anything about myself, I had many acquaintances. I also had romantic relationships with people who, however, always tended to say, “It is a shame that we are homosexuals,” meaning that they experienced homosexuality as a condemnation and not as a beautiful thing, as I always thought spontaneously. Hence, this hiding, intellectually as well, within groups always bothered me. In Turin, there were also many people in the cultural world, such as Enrico Colombotto Rosso, who exhibited their homosexuality but did not live it as a normal life; it was more of an exhibition. With Fuori!, it was completely different: it was about us, without any exhibition, with a political edge, thus an attempt to live in a completely “normal” (in quote marks) way this sexual situation that involved our entire lives.
What happened at the Sanremo event?
The curious thing is that there are various versions. In the meanwhile, I went to Sanremo because my mother had recently moved there, in those few months, so I went to visit her with the intention of taking part in this event. Various people arrived but in a very informal way; it was not a very precise organization. Word had spread, and those who more or less frequented Fuori! showed up.
However, Angelo had contacted foreign groups such as the French movement FHAR (Front Homosexuel d’Action Révolutionnaire). Angelo Pezzana and Françoise d’Eaubonne entered, signed up for the psychiatrists’ conference, and protested internally. Outside, various people held signs prepared beforehand. What struck me was seeing that passer-by, including journalists, were interested. So, we stood outside the building, in the garden, getting to know each other and chatting with everyone.
Mario Mieli was exceptional with this because he managed to involve all the passers-by and therefore the beautiful aspect was precisely the atmosphere of openness and showing up. People occasionally commented with phrases such as, “But you are homosexuals, and you do not look like it”. While this could be seen as negative or positive, they spoke to us like so-called “normal” people. We managed to impose a different idea from the prevailing one, namely the prejudice that homosexuals were transvestites and prostitutes or other negative stereotypes. We presented ourselves as people with entirely professional, normal lives.
The demonstration in Sanremo on April 5, 1972, attacked the concepts discussed at the psychiatry conference, that is, the unfortunate idea of curing homosexuality.
This was the starting point. The demonstration challenged current psychiatry, and the result was to show ourselves publicly without shame.
How did you contribute to Fuori!?I came from a radical architecture experience. It was called this way at the time. It focused not so much on Italian design and the idea itself was linked to Lotta Continua, to Potere Operaio, to these groups, to the idea of experiencing the city in a different way.
In Turin, there was Arte Povera, and I knew many artists like Michelangelo Pistoletto and others. I frequented them and had a stance on editorial graphics that differed from what was fashionable in the alternative and homosexual press at the time.
My contribution was the graphics for the first issues of Fuori! in collaboration with Angelo Pezzana. My idea, even if criticized, was to make a serious journal, at the level of The New York Review of Books, presenting precise and clear ideas without any disguise. At that time, a magazine like Re Nudo was circulating, with inserts of homosexual themes and psychedelic graphics that had everything confused, meaning that nothing was clear or clarified, perhaps it was even wanted, but there was no idea to make a specific political statement on the attitude to adopt.
My contribution was to make a newspaper that was clear, precise, and serious from a graphic point of view. There were also interventions by Nanda Pivano and Ettore Sottsass.
Let’s say that I attempted, with my small contribution – besides participating in the demonstrations – to make a provocative but not vague statement (Angelo Pezzana and Carlo Sismondi were very clear) in presenting precise ideas, with an attitude that also spoke to the political and cultural world without flaws.
What has been your experience as an architect regarding the United States?
While I was still a student, I started working in Turin in the studio of Piero De Rossi and Giorgio Ceretti, who both worked at the university. Our most interesting projects were in Italy, for instance in a place called Piper, like the one in Rome, that was very interesting architecturally. Initially, it was a disco, but then it evolved thanks to the advice of Edoardo Fadini, a theater critic in contact with the international theater scene. This venue hosted shows by the Living Theater and the Open Theater, as well as personalities like Carmelo Bene, as well as performances of artists such as Michelangelo Pistoletto, Marisa Merz, Piero Gilardi, and others, who held exhibitions and performances in this venue.
November 1969-July 1970
This caught the attention of Argentine architect Emilio Ambasz of MoMA, who organized the exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape in 1972. He invited leading Italian architects of the time, such as Ettore Sottsass, Gae Aulenti, and Mario Bellini, along with radical groups like Archizoom and other Florentine groups.
Being linked to political movements like Lotta Continua and Potere Operaio, we decided not to showcase beautiful Italian design. Instead, we created an operation that for me was of enormous cultural significance: we produced three “fotoromanzi” [picture stories] about the city.
The idea of the picture stories was approached as a distorted Italian popular genre as it dealt with the political problem of the city and the city government. These “fotoromanzi” were constructed with photographs of actors and inserted documents. At MoMA, we presented three trolleys with these “fotoromanzi” that were distributed for free, and this had a very strong impact.
At the same time, we also presented some furniture pieces that became iconic, such as the Pratone, a large seat made of tall blades of grass on which one could lay down.
(curator: Emilio Ambasz), MoMA, New York, 1972
The Pratone was featured on the cover of the exhibition catalog Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, along with other furniture pieces that we started making for Gufram. Instead, at the 14th Triennale in Milan, during the year of protest, we were invited to create a large hall where public activities could be held, designed, and there we made a very strange place where people could make speeches, recordings, do a little bit of everything.
The Triennale periodically hosted exhibitions about the city or design, and our section focused on public meetings. In this general exhibition, the part given to us was about public meetings: we designed very strange things like huge sloping lawns for standing or listening, and spaces where one could speak. The idea was not to think of home furnishings but of public furniture that would allow great freedom of action.
These were the most important experiences for me because they contained a political and formal openness, with a quite identifiable attitude.
Cover Image: Riccardo Rosso (to the right of the banner), with Enzo Francone (to the left of the banner), at the demonstration against the Concordato, Turin, 1973
Photo Credits © Courtesy of the Fondazione Angelo Pezzana-Fuori! Archives and Riccardo Rosso
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