Art: Tower Builder

The most discussed exhibition in Italy last week was of 94 landscapes and cityscapes signed “Francesco Torri.” It was not the quality of the paintings that made talk, though they were pretty good. Unpretentious sketches of pleasant spots for a picnic or an apéritif, the canvases were simple in composition and glowing in color. They were the work of a man, one critic had averred, “who knows his trade.”

Torri’s trade is rayon textiles. He is head man of gigantic and world-famed Snia Viscosa (40,000 employees). He signs himself “Torri” (Towers), he explained, because he has built three towering structures: an office building in Milan and factories near Venice and in Spain. His real name is Franco Marinotti, and his personal income is around $2,000,000 a year. At 60, Marinotti looks a bit like a short and overweight Daddy Warbucks. He has painted all his life.

As a youth, Marinotti worked in Russia for an Italian textile firm and exhibited annually in Czarist Moscow. Back in Italy, he made a secret of his art, concentrated on being a tycoon.

Why did he make a mystery of his ivory tower until now? Well, says Marinotti, “an industrialist who paints is apt to be looked on by others as a man who is distracted from his own work. However, once a person can show the work he has accomplished . . .”