(Auto) biographilcal notes

I was born on December 1, 1941, in Addis Abeba,Ethiopia, where my father, unwisely confident about the imperialist destiny of fascist Italy, had gone to seek his fortune. When I was eighteen months old the war forced us to hastily abandon our "place in the sun"; with my mother and my sister I made the long journey by sea: 45 days to circumnavigate the African continent - the British did not welcome ships flying the Italian flag into the Suez Canal in those days - and finally to reach Italy. My father, still optimistic, had remained in Africa to try to make the best of the situation; after four years without success, he joined us in Italy. In Casalcermelli, a village in the plains, with a population of little more than one thousand, in the north of Italy, my Macondo, I was, for the most part , educated by my paternal grandfather, nearly a full-time inventor and maker of machines, who treated his farming as a mere pastime. I remember discovering the mysteries of the little house, the light and the freedom of the large courtyard, the shade of the pergola , the marvels of the vegetable garden and the fields, the banks of the stream, and its rushing waters full of fish: truly happy childhood.... As a student , I never had much of a sense of duty; the few things that interested me I would do adequately, while I simply ignored the others, which appeared, and perhaps actually were, quite boring; obviously I was not a prize pupil. My memories of school are, for the most part, rather unpleasant, especially those of my university years, at the Turin Polytechnic, where an engineering approach held sway. If there is anything positive I can say about my university education, it is that it influenced me so little that it also had the virtue of not depriving me of the pleasure of discovering things on my own.

Pier Leandro (Leo) Milanese was born on September 18, 1952, in Lu a town of about 1,400 inhabitants in the hills of the lower Monferrato region. He earned a degree at the Turin Polytechnic in 1978. It is a widespread conviction that one of his most noteworthy qualities is the fact that he has been able to put up with me for almost twenty years. This is undoubtedly true, and I consider the day Leo set foot in the studio, in the summer of 1978, as the luckiest day of my career....

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