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MILAN. Philippe Daverio, art critic, gallery owner, teacher, “civil servant”, writer, popularizer, died. He was born in 1949 in Mulhouse, Alsace, which he considered the crossroads of Europe, to an Italian father. Polyglot, he spoke almost all European languages. He moved to Milan around the sixties, which he did in his own way, marching in processions with his bow tie: as a young man his eccentric way of dressing distinguished him from conformism. He never graduated but soon found his way by opening an art gallery that quickly became one of the most important in the city, an immediate protagonist of courses and appeals of taste, for example in the revaluation of 20th century Italian art, including the from the fascist era.
He caused a scandal in the Milan of the salons, after Tangentopoli, when he agreed to be Councilor for Culture in the first Northern League that ruled the city, that of Mario Formentini. He did it because, in fact, he had a great idea of politics and also considered himself to be of service to the community. However, it was his only political experience.
After his stage as a gallery owner, Daverio began to do what he did best: communicate, without the fences or the modesty of an Italian intellectual. On television to begin with, where he was the author and host of a successful and beautiful broadcast on Rai3 and then a guest on Bare the news. In the newspapers, where he used to be invited as a columnist and as an interviewee. In books, writing many volumes where disclosure never became approximation and the beauty of writing was never neglected. And at the university, in Palermo, where he had a chair, the one who had never graduated.
Talkative of verve and extraordinary culture (a dinner with Daverio was worth, in fact, like a university lesson, but it used to be much more fun), had become a character without wanting it, simply thanks to the sympathy, the wit, the calculated eccentricity of its pinstripes and its paradoxes. A great “irregular” of culture, which you will miss a lot in an increasingly standardized and boring country.