To understand why Milan became one of the laboratories of European art in the second half of the twentieth century, it is worth following the trail of Tommaso Trini. A critic, journalist and curator, he did more than simply observe art: he spent time with artists, caught their ideas as they were taking shape and sought new ways to tell their stories. The exhibition Tommaso Trini. The Earth Seen from the Moon retraces this adventure from the 1960s to the mid-1980s through notebooks, photographs, letters, magazines, annotated books and recordings, many of them previously unseen. From his collaboration with Domus, which began in 1966, to the founding of DATA magazine, Trini chronicled Arte Povera, video art and environmental practices as they unfolded, along with the increasingly fertile encounter between art, science and technology. The title comes from an image of the Earth seen from the Moon published by Trini in 1969. It is the perfect metaphor for his approach: changing one’s point of view to reveal connections invisible at close range. More than an exhibition about a critic, this is a journey into a unique moment in Italian culture, seen through the eyes of someone who had both the privilege - and the talent - to recognise its significance as it was happening.
