COURAGEOUS CAPTAINS. ANTONIO COLOMBO: «CYCLING AND ART, MY LIFE HAS ALWAYS BEEN AGAINST THE WIND»

TUTTOBICI | 04/04/2025 | 08:20
di Pier Augusto Stagi
In front of me is an artistic installation, behind me a courtyard I just crossed that brought me back in memory to almost forty years ago in just over a hundred steps. Shortly before, I passed through an automatic gate that opened before me on the eastern outskirts of Milan. Here at Via Pestagalli 31, where for years the Columbus production unit was located and today the "Colombo's Archive" is about to take shape, even if a form is already there. In front of me is Antonio Colombo, soon to be 75 years old on August 5th, for years the "Courageous Captain" leading Gruppo, the mother of Columbus and Cinelli, a visionary entrepreneur capable of combining industry with design and art, making everything unique, beautiful, homogeneous and desirable. In front of us, an artistic installation, a wall - "the wall" - of what has been and what will be. A wall of Columbus objects that have written the history of Italian design since the 1930s and still say something today, because what has been said remains inevitably forever, to be told. "It's a living and evolving archive. Be careful, it's not a museum, because that's just a dust collector," he tells me with his calm manners of a great gentleman and with those eyes that scrutinize the world with the always amused and dreamy curiosity. "It wants to be a meeting place, a space to be lived and alive, surrounded by a history that belongs to us, that belongs to me, which deserves to be seen and reviewed, the only way to stimulate the new and our creativity."

How was your childhood?
"Beautiful? Yes, let's say beautiful. Even though there were never a lack of tensions and turbulence in my home, when you're a child everything seems to flow over your skin, but something always remains. Dad Angelo Luigi, born in 1892, was the son of workers, and he worked for years as an employee at the Stabilimenti Metallurgici Spadaccini in Milan, until in 1919 he decided with a colleague, Mario Stabilini, to open A.L. Colombo. The two went forward by mutual agreement until 1922, then dad liquidated his partner and continued alone. A far-sighted and capable man, above all a man of character, in the sense that things went his way. Those were such times, and that's how we took it. I'm a second-bed child, so to speak, like my sister Rosa Paola. Dad first married Emilia Gravé, with whom he had Gilberto and Mariantonietta. Their relationship was not the most serene. Then he married Tersilia Fogliata, my mother. I grew up in Milan, on Via Teodosio. Elementary school at Leonardo da Vinci, middle school at Quintino di Vona in the Loreto area. High school at Giosuè Carducci, where the handsome René, Renato Vallanzasca, had also passed. Hot, torrid years of protest, I participated in the Parini occupation. These are the times, and this is how I am. I'm a rebellious and restless soul, who would have liked to study architecture, but 'the unfortunate one responded' and adapted to the family's wishes: here's Bocconi. I'll do my own thing. Two months, no more. I have something else in my head, there's much more in the world. I switch to political science: with a booklet titled 'State and Revolution' by Vladimir Lenin, about a hundred pages, I pass three exams, with a group and political grade. I move to law: there I get my head straight, I reach two exams and the thesis for my degree, but I've already entered the company (1971, ed.) and in the end I become passionate, especially because the first job I'm assigned is Eddy Merckx's hour record in Mexico City. Dealing with Ernesto Colnago for me was like taking a master's degree. Merckx has an agreement with Reynolds, thanks to the master from Cambiago I bring home the agreement. We work on the record with great passion, the story you all know. What you don't know is that Cino Cinelli, former professional cyclist, great friend of my father and a key figure in Italian cycling, founder of the first professional cyclists' union, was not only a bicycle manufacturer but a great businessman. He was the distributor of the most important Italian brands on the world market, including Columbus, of which he was the worldwide exclusive distributor. I was the one who broke this marriage. Why should he be the only one to distribute our products on the market? I ask my father, who struggles to answer. I was a long-haired guy - as Cino called me - very '68, but I wasn't stupid. For two years I regularly paid royalties to Cino Cinelli just to free myself from those chains and from a conflictual relationship, then a relationship of great esteem and friendship was born, so much so that in 1977 he asked me if I would like to carry on his company. I thought about it and accepted: the Cinelli brand had always been something absolutely precious and cutting-edge. Few pieces but made right. A brand for connoisseurs, for people who could distinguish quality and attention to detail. At 27, I found myself managing Columbus and Cinelli. The secret is always the same: choose the right collaborators. And I do nothing but take Gabella and put him on Cinelli and Giussani on Columbus. The house? Here, exactly where we are now, after a long journey, on Via Pestagalli 31".

The Eighties were happy years, of great planning and success.
"The Laser was born, designed in 1981 by Andrea Pesenti. A historic product of design and Made in Italy, an innovative and winning project in the history of cycling and bicycles. A true design icon, which also won the Compasso d'Oro in 1991".
Then the Rampichino arrives...
"A real milestone. The first mountain bike produced in Europe and then the Bootleg, a bicycle that anticipated both cycle tourism and the cultural movement strictly connected to fixed-gear bikes. I have always maintained that Cinelli has accompanied the history of different generations, in a sort of 'never-ending story', where cycling takes on the role of a true social container".
You brought mountain bikes to Italy, but some claim primacy, like Mario Rossin and Domenico Garbelli.
"I never set myself the goal of being a precursor, but an innovator. I'm interested in things of the world. I'm an observer who intuits possibilities and presents them to the world in a personal way. One thing is certain: the name Rampichino - which I'm proud of - is mine. And I proposed it in my own way. If they say I'm the one who imported this new bicycle from the States, it means I proposed it in the most correct and convincing way".
You have the art of intercepting new trends.
"My artistic knowledge, ranging from Keith Haring to Futura to Barry McGee to name a few, opened many doors that would have been precluded to others. If Street art offered the possibility of using abandoned and anonymous spaces to fresco as churches were once frescoed, the bicycle for me is a perimeter, a territory to color and overturn. I quote myself: when I think of the bicycle, I see a container to fill with symbols".
You were also a great manager trainer...
"I don't know if I was a trainer, I believe I made people breathe an unconventional air, a certain bizarre-creative atmosphere of possibilities. I was fortunate to intercept talented people like Paolo Erzegovesi (Columbus and Cinelli), Angelo Caccia (Campagnolo and Wilier), Claudio Marra (FSA), Ermanno Leonardi (Specialized), the already mentioned Gabella and Giussani, and the prematurely deceased Pancrazio Centola (3t), Luciano Fusarpoli (Pinarello), Walter De Luca (Gore, Q36.5): I wasn't good at retaining them, perhaps because I asked them for things that weren't in their wheelhouse. What they couldn't do for me, an incurable perfectionist Virgo, became the most important thing, when instead what they could do was what mattered most. There I clearly made a mistake".
Try to give a definition of yourself.
"A pain in the neck? Maybe. Certainly a 'repentant industrialist'. I think I did it quite well and with important results, but it's no secret that I have always had a strong propensity for art and design. I always put signs before balance sheets. For a thousand reasons, I found myself managing a difficult inheritance during the era of the Red Brigades. I took the reins of a metalworking company in one of the most dramatic moments of Italian history, marked by terrorism".
Do you recognize yourself as having a particular gift?
"The fact that I never gave up, that I tried to combine the activity of an anomalous entrepreneur who has a view of the art world makes me think that I'm a stubborn type. The fact of reinventing ourselves thanks to the fixed-gear bike, where I saw not so much a trend as a new mode of competition, is another step in my story. All this leads me to think that among the qualities that belong to me, there is certainly resistance".
When was the passion for art born inside you?
"It has always been there, since I was a child. Since I was a kid. I always frequented museums and exhibitions. When and how did I start? With rock. Album covers were art books. 'Axis: Bold as Love' by Jimi Hendrix; 'Love You Live' by the Rolling Stones signed by Andy Warhol; 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' by the Beatles, created by Richard Hamilton. It was a visual universe that broke the schemes with tradition. From there I traced back history, trying to understand why someone does something one way and someone another, until discovering ancient art, design and contemporaneity. Or designers who had brought artistic content into everyday life, starting with the never sufficiently remembered Alessandro Mendini. Perhaps the discovery of Columbus's origins, what you see here, also influenced my training, because my father in the Thirties and Forties collaborated with the greatest designers".
Is there an author who is a fixed point and synthesis of your passion? The artist par excellence?
"In design, Alessandro Mendini and clearly the world that revolved around him, Studio Alchymia. Alessandro made me discover color and fantasy, in fact I collaborated a lot with him and Alchymia. Then I was friends with many, with Mario Schifano I lived an enormous passion. However, I can't make a ranking: artists are all good, the good ones. If I have to go beyond the judgment of skill, perhaps I only put Schifano, who put sweat and blood. And then, having a passion for cycling, which led him to make jerseys for the Tour and Tirreno, he touched certain chords of my heart and sensitivity that no other artist could touch. Our friendship with Maurizio Castelli made sure to constitute a friendly triumvirate that marked my existence absolutely. Maurizio Castelli and I were two brigands. With him I was also the publisher of Ciclismo d'Italia for a year, a weekly directed by Enrico Magatti, an alternative newspaper to Tuttociclismo, the official organ of the Italian Cycling Federation. It was a bloodbath, but how much fun we had...".
A regret of yours?
"Absolutely not having signed any of the tens of thousands of products I made. I say thousands because in addition to those of Columbus and Cinelli, I also include the Castelli clothing factory for a while. The Rampichino is my name, which identifies something very specific, and I never signed it. Then I have another regret...".
Tell me.
"The spinach, protagonists of a story that could have had a better ending, but my desire for rebellion came out even on that occasion. If you remember when we appealed to the UCI which considered them dangerous, we used the 'Lotta Continua' symbol as an image: a closed fist gripping spinach. The writing was clear: 'Legalize Spinach'. I invaded all the newspapers in Italy: it was not a good choice, but that's how I am. I was wrong not to make a quiet lobby, but my soul is clear to everyone and each of us is what we are. The idea was beautiful, for three years we sold a mountain of them, then the UCI made them illegal, prohibited them, for me it was not only a blow to the heart, but a blow to a company that had just invested in a new headquarters, in Caleppio di Settala, on the outskirts of Milan".
Is there something you would have liked to do and didn't?
"A cycling team. I would have liked to do it, but my way, with my philosophy, very rock: in style, clothing, cars. That could express itself with rock-blues modes, styles and qualities, with John Belushi as honorary president".
Do you regret selling the Group in 2021 to Asobi Ventures, an investment fund traceable to Texas fashion manager Victor Luis?
"I'll answer like this, with an open answer that I personally close: No, but...".
Champion of the heart?
"Felice Gimondi".
Song of the heart?
"'All Along The Watchtower' by Bob Dylan".
Film.
"Once Upon a Time in America".
Actor.
"Robert De Niro and Alberto Sordi: I can't detach myself from a Sordi film, even the bad ones".
Actress.
"Monica Vitti".
Color.
"Orange".
Flower.
"Anemone".
What drives you crazy?
"Those who shout in restaurants. And then I have a decalogue that over the years I've distributed to my closest collaborators made of banned words: 'fil rouge', all adverbs ending in 'mente', like absolutely, certainly. I can't stand those who say 'fluid agenda'. But recently I can't stand Trumpism. Ugly thing".
Greedy for...
"Cheesecake. The visualization of me in New York with a long coffee and a cheesecake I really like".
Are you the classic cyclist who pedals to eat?
"Exactly. Searching for the best trattoria is one of my many passions. If I can stop after about fifty kilometers to satisfy my palate's pleasures, after regenerating my mind and eyes, I'm the happiest person in the world. Today I spend much of my free time in Ranco, on Lake Maggiore, with my wife Alessandra 'Titi' Cusatelli, a designer and art director, who professionally speaking was by my side for 22 years and with whom we created, beyond many bikes and products in the 'Cinelli Art Program', an unrepeatable experience we are very proud of: Ranco is our 'buen retiro', even though our world remains the world."
Is curiosity male or female?
"Curiosity is fluid, very fluid".
What will the 'Colombo's Archive' be?
"It will be a place to give back: it will return what has been, setting in motion thoughts and actions of what could be. A living place, where to hold events and meetings, laugh about what has been done with passion, without crying, not even when there would be reason".
You recently cried.
"I lost Luca Beatrice, a great friend, a great art critic and an immense man of culture in the absolute sense, with whom I shared many passions, starting with rock music. I did a lot with him, with him by my side I would have done much more. Yes, for him I also cried".
The neon lights of the 'wall' go out. The Colombo archive is still a kind of large warehouse, but it's already heartbreakingly beautiful.