Portrait of Arrigo Recordati

Arrigo Recordati (1927-1999) does not directly benefit the Maggiore Hospital. In his memory Giovanni, the current president of the Recordati Company, undertakes to set up an intensive care and cardiology unit for the hospital and to renovate other spaces in the "Conjugi Sacco" Pavilion, which will house the facilities of the Center for Hypertension. The donation exceeds one and a half million euros. The inauguration took place in 2004, in the presence of the then Minister of Health Girolamo Sirchia. Arrigo is the son of Giovanni (1898-1952), responsible for the transformation of the old family pharmacy, active since 1820. The "Reggiano Pharmaceutical Laboratory", founded in Correggio (Reggio Emilia) in 1926, looking at the most advanced experiences of the Schiaparelli, Erba, Zambeletti and Lepetit industries, has its roots in the small laboratory where Giovanni had ventured into the study and preparation. When his father passes away, it is Arrigo, the eldest of his eight children, just twenty-five years old and only two years after graduating in Chemistry from Bologna, who is managing the company (which in 1950 has 325 employees and occupies a area of ​​15,000 square meters. With determination and shrewdness, in 1953 the young man completed the project, initiated by his father, to transfer to pharmaceutical production, research and general management from Correggio to the current headquarters in Milan, where he promotes clinical and laboratory research and experimentation, strategic for the growth of a company in that sector, founding a new factory in Aprilia (Latina) in 1963 , which replaces that of Correggio, ventures into foreign markets, shares the company on the Stock Exchange (1984) and faces the crisis of the pharmaceutical industry in the early Nineties. The company employs approximately 2,000 people, 150 of whom are involved in research and development; Recordati products are present in around 100 countries. When Arrigo dies, the sixth generation of Recordati is present in the family industry, which, in his memory, a year after his death, establishes an international prize for scientific research, assigned every two years to a scientist who has distinguished himself in the sector. of cardiovascular diseases or in the study of biochemical mechanisms of particular relevance in the therapeutic field. After the huge donation to the Ca 'Granda, the commissioning of the execution of the commemorative portrait is entrusted to Alessandro Papetti (Milan 1958), an artist who combines painting with an interesting engraving activity. It represents the character in an almost monochromatic work, painted with dense, rapid and thick touches, where reflections, shading and perspective are entrusted to ample brushstrokes of more diluted white; the volatile, expressive and angular face of the captain of industry stands out against the white of the evening dress.