Aldo Bassetti, politics and culture: the Turati Club
The Circolo Culturale (later Club) Turati was founded in 1961 with a board of directors consisting of Aldo Bassetti and, among others, Vittorio Olcese and Eugenio Scalfari with whom, in those very years, he went into partnership to save the weekly 'L'Espresso'.
The entrepreneur: Aldo Bassetti, beer and ‘family’ water
After the First World War, the Bassettis thus acquired two of the oldest Italian breweries, Spluga in Chiavenna and Birrificio Angelo Poretti in Induno Olona. Thanks mainly to the latter, Aldo Bassetti took his beer to southern Italy and imported and distributed the great Danish brands Tuborg and Carlsberg. In addition to beer, Bassetti invested in mineral water, for example producing Frisia mineral water in the Spluga plant, which in the 1980s became the first to be marketed in Milan.
Aldo Bassetti: the war, his aunt killed by the Nazis, paintings by Mario Mafai donated to Brera
In September 1943, the SS killed a group of Jews in Meina, including Lotte Fröhlich Mazzucchelli, aunt of 17-year-old Aldo Bassetti, who was given the terrible task of looking for his body among the corpses thrown into the lake. In memory of that tragedy, Bassetti, honorary president from 2007 to 2020 of the Amici di Brera, purchased and donated Mario Mafai's 'Fantasie' to the Pinacoteca in 2018.
Aldo Bassetti: childhood and education
Aldo Bassetti, the second son of Felice Bassetti, belongs to one of the great textile families of Lombardy. After graduating in civil engineering from Milan Polytechnic, he took his first steps in the family business, which he later left to successfully follow his own path.
Summary of my speech at the Salone del Risparmio, Milan on 16 April 2025
If there is no clarity, irrational dynamics of jealousy and annoyance are triggered, which become grains of sand in the wheels of the company. People start to stop talking to each other, or to do so through other people, or to write to each other. And at that point, the disaster begins
The ‘Rinascentine’: Giorgina Venosta, Donatella Brustio in Cerri, Adriana Botti in Monti, Rosellina Archinto
My mother, and almost all her closest friends, worked at La Rinascente, the oldest and most famous department store in Milan. They went in at a very young age, either as their first job after their studies or, like my mother Giorgina, making a living after separating from her husband (in her case my father, Bernardo Caprotti). They were trained by a very effective school: the employees were the 'rinascentini'...
Giorgina Venosta’s friends: Claudia and Andrée Ruth Shammah
How good, with a play by the young and for the young, at the Franco Parenti Theatre, with the collaboration of the Guido Venosta Foundation, ended up triumphing over the evil of the 'dark years', of a senseless persecution of me. In both cases the sisters, Claudia and Andrée Ruth Shammah, believed in me and supported me, first one then the other, in different spheres
Giorgina Venosta’s friends: Inge Feltrinelli, Anna Nogara, Adriana Botti in Monti
My mother's friends, Giorgina, also became my affectionate 'protectors', as in the case of Inge Feltrinelli, who was one of the few people who did not abandon me when the worst years of my life arrived. Then Anna Nogara, actress and director, Roberto Olivetti's second wife and mother of his only daughter, who in her eighties still treads the boards. Finally Adriana Botti, later wife of Mario Monti, owner of the Longanesi publishing house
According to Google, Bernardo Caprotti has no children. And the Corriere della sera does not help
For Google, My mother Giorgina Venosta still does not exist and Wikipedia has deleted the page on Guido Venosta, creator of the Italian Association for Cancer Research. The picture is completed by the Corriere della Sera – national edition – which, for example, after deleting me in 2020, is one of the few Italian newspapers not to have reviewed my book, Le Ossa dei Caprotti
Le Ossa dei Caprotti’ presentation, Demetra Talk – Milan 25 March 2025
“Reading History to Understand the Present and Hypothesise the Future”. I had the pleasure of speaking at the Demetra Talk that took place in Milan on 25 March 2025 at the Sala Convegni of Palazzo Recalcati with the moderation of David Berera
