The best of Art Nouveau takes shape in the rough-hewn ashlars, the monumental facade, the stairway and the floral balustrade of Palazzo Castiglioni. This three-story building, built by Giuseppe Sommaruga between 1901 and 1904, initially caught the attention of Milan because of its two female nude sculptures placed over the entryway, considered too provocative for the times. Heading towards Porta Venezia, you can find one of the most original Milanese Liberty-style works, designed by architect Giovanni Battista Bossi. With its cement floral motifs and, above all, its facade decorated with ceramic tiles depicting female figures, Casa Galimberti rises proudly from its stone base. Also on Via Malpighi, but at number 12, Casa Guazzoni has remarkable wrought iron decorations, as well as a complex web of cherubs and garlands, sculpted in cement around the windows and the balustrades of the balconies on the second floor. The floral touches are also a feature of the former Dumont Cinema, one of Italy’s first, the name of which, a common French surname, shows the intent to confer upon the structure a touch of the exotic and avant-garde. The last Art Deco treasure is in Piazza Oberdan. Here, in 1926, the inauguration took place of a project headed up by architect Portaluppi to offer calm to travellers and citizens alike among marble, wainscoting, commercial spaces and others to pamper physical well-being. A fountain surmounted by the Goddess Igea stood at the entrance of the thermal baths. It was known as the Diurno - a sort of Pompei of the ‘20s - closed in 2006, but periodically open to visits that allow its decaying splendour to be appreciated.
The exhibition tells how the Etruscan civilization influenced, on several occasions, the visual culture of the short century: starting from the archaeological finds and the Etruscan tours, up to the Chimera by Mario Schifano, executed during a performance in Florence in 1985.
Once Again. Chiara Dynys Between Waves, Light, and Memory
Palazzo Citterio presents Chiara Dynys’s immersive work: mechanical waves, light, and fragments of text emerge in the hypogeal space, evoking a mental landscape between dream, memory, and visual illusion.
Eyes in Dialogue: Berengo Gardin and Ramistella at Leica Galerie
At Leica Galerie Milan, the works of Gianni Berengo Gardin and Roselena Ramistella create a cross-generational dialogue, part of the 100th anniversary of the Leica I, the first compact 35mm film camera.
