Art exhibitions in June and the gallery’s recommended book

During the period from 1847 to 1849, patriotic ideals could be expressed in the light of day and consequently craftsmen, textile factories, and merchants were engaged in a brisk production and marketing of handkerchiefs that could now be freely used in public space.

The exhibition presents handkerchiefs (foulards carré, mainly made of silk) produced between 1847 and 1912 with some unique pieces that have no analogies with the relics conserved in other Italian museums, such as the handkerchief depicting Balilla (1847), the one dedicated to a conspiracy of 1847 that never took place (a real fake-news of the mid-nineteenth century) and a rare and extraordinary Masonic silk handkerchief.

On the centenary of the birth of Robert Rauschenberg (Port Arthur, 1925 – Captiva Island, 2008), the Museo del Novecento in Milan presents an exceptional exhibition project that for the first time builds a bridge between the works of this fundamental protagonist of the history of art and some of the most significant masterpieces housed in the museum’s collections, weaving a web between the innovative vision of the American artist and the rich fabric of 20th century Italian art.

Known for his lively curiosity, his aptitude for contamination and the exchange of ideas, in Milan the American artist dialogues with the great masters of our home through works that have arrived from museums across Europe: from Giacomo Balla to Carlo Carrà, from Alberto Burri to Mario Schifano, up to Maurizio Cattelan, each encounter has something new to reveal. Like unexpected guests, Rauschenberg’s works peep into the path of the Museo del Novecento, establishing comparisons and resonances on the basis of shared visions, materials and artistic intentions, in a journey that embraces the main trends of Italian art in the 20th century.

The exhibition is subdivided into chapters inspired by certain archetypes of the metaphysical imagination (‘Distances’, ‘Arches’, ‘Columns’, ‘Statues’, ‘Monuments’, ‘Shadows’, ‘Apparitions’, ‘Voids’) and consists of over fifty photographic portraits of Naples dense with references to Metaphysical Art, placed in dialogue with paintings by Giorgio de Chirico.

From this emerges the profile of Mimmo Jodice as a spiritual artist, admirable in using places as if they were pieces of unpredictable still life.

Through a selection of around seventy key works from prestigious international museums, including Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Guggenheim New York, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Tate Modern, London, as well as major galleries, including Jeanne Bucher Jaeger, Paris and cultural institutions, such as Comité Arpad Szenes – Vieira da Silva, Paris and Fundação Arpad Szenes – Vieira da Silva, Lisbon, the exhibition offers an in-depth and completely new look at the evolution of the visual language of Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (Lisbon, 1908 – Paris, 1992). A Portuguese artist naturalised French, the exhibition highlights her ability to transform pictorial space into abstract environments and optical illusions.

With references to the Portuguese decorative tradition, urban landscapes and the influences of Cubism and Futurism, the exhibition explores the link between abstraction and figuration in imaginary and real spaces.