The must-see exhibitions and events in February

© Sosthen Hennekam

Milano: “Arrigo Arrighetti Architetto”

The exhibition - curated by Adriana Granato and Marco Biraghi - presents a selection of Arrigo Arrighetti's projects in Milan, including the Santa Croce Kindergarten, the Cesare Correnti Institute, the Solari swimming pool, the Amendola underground station, the Sant'Ambrogio Quarter, and the Church of San Giovanni Bono, presented through original drawings conserved in the Trivulziana Library of the Sforzesco Castle in Milan, and the Cittadella degli Archivi of the Milan City Council. The layout of the exhibition, curated by studio ibsen, intends to restore - through the "brutalist" use of materials such as perforated bricks and load belts - the atmosphere of the building site, and consequently of a season in which architecture was characterised in a strongly material and concrete sense. The photographs on display - all strictly in black and white - are the work of the Dutch photographer Sosthen Hennekam, who has had a long experience of Milanese architecture, particularly post World War II. The models of some of Arrigo Arrighetti's buildings are the work of the Labora studio of the Politecnico di Milano.

Where: Politecnico di Milano, Spazio Mostre Guido Nardi
When: Until 25 March 2024

© Carlo Favero
 

Bologna: “Agostino Iacurci. Ruinenlust”

During the crowded days of Artefiera garage BENTIVOGLIO returns to open its window on Via del Borgo di San Pietro in Bologna with a special appointment, featuring not a work from the permanent collection but a site-specific work realised at the invitation of curator Davide Trabucco: Ruinenlust by Agostino Iacurci. The work builds a bridge between the artist's imagination and the works of Felice Giani on display until 25 February in the exhibition set up in the basement of the Palazzo: the work of both is in fact inspired, although in different ways, by architectura picta, and Iacurci's intervention highlights the similarities: Ruinenlust is in fact a painted temple, made of wood, felt, iron and neon, inspired by the sketch of a wall decoration by Giani. At the centre of the temple, after dusk, a neon moon-shaped light illuminates the space, while the colour, spread out in sharp, geometric fields, a distinctive element of Iacurci's grammar, with its polychromy enhances the textures of the fabrics. Included in the prestigious billboard of the twelfth edition of Art City, this scenographic structure, created for the 'irregular' exhibition space of the garage, aims to stimulate a reflection on time.

Where: garage BENTIVOGLIO
When: Until 24 February 2024

SIMON HANTAÏ Azzurro, Installation view, 2024 © Archives Simon Hantaï / Adagp, Paris, 2022. Photo: Matteo D'Eletto Courtesy Gagosian
 

Roma: “Simon Hantaï - Azzurro”

Curated by Anne Baldassari, the exhibition focuses on the significance of blue in Simon Hantaï’s practice, illuminating his affinity with Italy and the influence on his work of its classical painting tradition. Azzurro follows a major retrospective, Simon Hantaï. The Centenary Exhibition, at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2022). It also forms part of a sequence with Gagosian’s two previous Hantaï exhibitions, LES NOIRS DU BLANC, LES BLANCS DU NOIR at Le Bourget in 2019–20, which featured black-and-white works, and Les blancs de la couleur, la couleur du blanc at 980 Madison Avenue, New York, in 2022, which emphasized combinations of primary and secondary colors.

Where: Gagosian Roma
When: Until 30 March 2024

© Carlo Favero
 

Bologna: “Patrick Tuttofuoco - Abbandona gli occhi”

On the combined occasion of ART CITY Bologna 2024 and the 50th Edition of Arte Fiera, Banca di Bologna will host in its Palazzo De’ Toschi Sala Convegni a special exhibition by Patrick Tuttofuoco, one of the most acclaimed and appreciated Italian artists of his generation. The title is Abbandona gli occhi [Surrender Your Eyes]. As part of the Bologna ART CITY program, the exhibition curated by Davide Ferri that opens to the public on Tuesday, Jan. 30 and runs through Sunday, Feb. 18 features new productions and two recent works. Abbandona gli occhi presents forms and techniques Tuttofuoco has adopted from the start, his industrial and synthetic materials such as neon, iron, and plastic, in the intent of involving viewers in the experience of the works rather than detached observance. Other aspects of his more recent work are developed further: focus on the medium of sculpture in both industrial/synthetic materials such as methacrylate and classic marble; and the repeated translation of form into figure, the human body, at different points in space.

Where: Palazzo De’ Toschi
When: Until 8 February 2024

© Miro Zagnoli
 

Milano: “Alberto Meda - Tensione e leggerezza”

The exhibition presents forty years of activity of Alberto Meda, Italian engineer, designer and planner, with projects, photographs, prototypes, drawings and unpublished materials. It is divided into seven sections that follow the main themes of his compositional poetics: the search for visual and constructive lightness through mechanical exercises, tension and suspension, attention to the integration of functions, technology and materials, the use of light and the evolved concept of comfort. The exploration of design and the relationship between design, technology and the user is developed in the Design Platform and Quadreria spaces, with a light installation conceived specifically for the Scalone d'Onore.

Where: Triennale Milano
When: Until 24 March 2024

Milano: “Primo alfabeto”

An exhibition that exceptionally brings together the works created by Gianfranco Baruchello between 1959 and 1962. Curated by Carla Subrizi and Maria Alicata, Primo alfabeto presents a series of works that centre around the concept of the alphabet. The exhibition includes paintings, objects, and drawings, displaying both the formal and conceptual aspects of Baruchello's already distinctive artistic exploration. The alphabet, according to Baruchello, starts with the body, and, in his view, the mental is also situated within the brain’s hypothalamus, a region controlling desire, the irrational, and states less controlled by reason. This anatomical perspective identifies areas between the physical and the psychic, between the organic and the inorganic, between the individual and the collective – «a function of the one in the other», as expressed by Baruchello. This terrain is traversed by figures that will become the key terms in his alphabet: fear, error energy, unfulfilled need, hostile entity, entropy noise, memory of the past, those who will come, border zones between the certain and the uncertain. The alphabet takes shape from affective situations, where affection is conceived as an inversion leading from the rational and the abstraction of language to the body’s sensations - registering, referencing, withholding, and rejecting».

Where: Massimo de Carlo
When: Until 9 March 2024

Marina di Bibbona: “Oliviero Toscani. Professione fotografo”

One hundred works to illustrate 60 years of the career of the famous Italian photographer, Oliviero Toscani.  His photos are sometimes ironic and funny, others crude and shocking like the famous photo of the Aids patient. His gaze and the advertising campaigns he worked on in the 1980s and then the 1990s changed the way we see the world. Among the works on show are his first big scandal: the famous Jesus Jeans poster 'Chi mi ama mi segua' (Who Loves Me Follow Me), the kiss between priest and nun from 1992, the Three Hearts White/Black/Yellow from 1996, No-Anorexia from 2007, but also the images he made for fashion from Donna Jordan to Claudia Schiffer, up to those of Monica Bellucci and even those from his training period at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich.

Where: Forte dei Cavalleggeri
When: Until 31 October 2024

Mimmo Cattarinich, Il regista Giuseppe Patroni Griffi dirige Laura Antonelli sul set di "Divina Creatura, 1975, Courtesy Associazione Culturale Mimmo Cattarinich
 

Abano Terme: “BACKSTAGE - Mimmo Cattarinich e la magia del fotografo di scena”

The faces of great actors and directors from the history of international cinema, such as Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Anthony Quinn, Marcello Mastroianni, Alberto Sordi, Capucine, Catherine Deneuve, Roberto Benigni, Claudia Cardinale, Maria Callas, but also contemporary protagonists such as Giuseppe Tornatore, Pedro Almodovar, Antonio Banderas, Javier Bardem, Isabelle Huppert, Rupert Everett, Rutger Hauer, Carlo Verdone, Monica Bellucci, Natalie Portman and Penelope Cruz are just some of the protagonists of Mimmo Cattarinich's photographs, to whom the Villa Bassi Rathgeb Museum in Abano Terme is dedicating an exhibition curated by Dominique Lora. 100 photographs from the immense archive of the Mimmo Cattarinich Cultural Association in Rome tell the story of Italian and international cinema from the 1960s to the present day.

Where: Museo Villa Bassi Rathgeb
When: Until16 June 2024

Cremona: “L’Ulisse di Hugo Pratt - Di mari e avventure prima di Corto Maltese”

An exhibition that was born from a union, that of the legend of the ancient Greek hero Ulysses and the boards that Hugo Pratt created in 1963 for the Corriere dei Piccoli, a few years before the birth of his most famous sailor: Corto Maltese. And it is also a meeting between two important realities of the City of Cremona: the Archaeological Museum, which hosts the exhibition, displaying the boards side by side with its exhibits, and the Centro Fumetto Andrea Pazienza, which organises the exhibition as part of its 35th anniversary. Hugo Pratt's magical drawings depict the colours, expressions, fears and silences of one of the best-loved and most talked-about ancient heroes, the hero of the journey, the protagonist of a life journey that has always been a symbol of freedom and adventure but also of power and deception. On display will be 25 original boards, front b/w, back in colour, placed among the works in the Museum, as well as more than 100 pages of the book. You can also admire original issues of the Corriere dei Piccoli and other Pratt publications.

Where: Museo Archeologico San Lorenzo
When: Until 3 March 2024

courtesy Fondazione MAXXI
 

Roma: “Riccardo Dalisi - Radicalmente”

Architect, designer and artist, twice winner of the Compasso d’Oro, Riccardo Dalisi was one of the most multifaceted and unconventional Italian designers of recent decades. A year after his death, a major retrospective to present Dalisi’s work in all its extreme variety and originality: from creative workshops with children in Naples to “ultra-poor” design, from architecture to the reinterpretation of the Neapolitan coffee pot, from urban installations to the reinterpretation of Mediterranean mythologies. Through drawings, sketches, furniture, objects, books, sculptures, paintings, photographs, archive documents, films and other materials, the radical and revolutionary character of the ‘Dalisi method’ is revealed. The fruitful contacts that Dalisi had with artists, designers, architects and critics such as Mimmo Jodice, Alessandro Mendini, Giancarlo De Carlo, Massimo Pica Ciamarra, Mimmo Paladino, Enrico Crispolti, Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Ettore Sottsass, etc. also emerge. The installation curated by Studio Novembre evokes an upside-down world, immersing the visitor in a dreamlike landscape populated by Dalisi’s creations. The exhibition also includes the research work that the artist-photographer Vincenzo Castella developed, together with a group of young visual artists (Daniele Marzorati, Davide Barberi, Edoardo Bonacina, Josefine Jyllnor), from the traces of the Neapolitan architect – in collaboration with NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti.

Where: Maxxi
When: Until 3 March 2024

© Juergen Teller
 

Milano: “Juergen Teller - i need to live”

German photographer Juergen Teller is best known for his candid portraits of celebrities, influential fashion editorials and distinctive campaigns for various designers. The exhibition presents over 1000 works, bringing together both personal and commissioned bodies of work, recognizable images, and new photographic series as well as videos and installations. i need to live represents Teller’s reaction to existential incidents which have shaped his life, sometimes in tragic ways. With his unique imagery, Teller celebrates the value of being alive, whilst acknowledging the fragility of human existence.

Where: Triennale Milano
When: Until 1 April 2024

© Lucrezia Roda
 

Milano: “Allan McCollum - Minime Variazioni”

Allan McCollum, one of the most original and influential American Conceptual artists, is shown in Milan at the Galleria Fumagalli: a project specifically conceived for the main room of the gallery, consisting of 660 elements created between 1988 and 1992, which will form a single large installation: Collection of Drawings. The work reflects the artist’s fifty-year research which takes the form of “collections” of works – drawings or sculptures, from a few elements to several thousand – apparently mass-produced, yet characterized by subtle and minimal variations in shape and color that distinguish the single from the “mass”. Since the 1970s, Allan McCollum has been questioning the dichotomy between hand-made production of unique works and mass production, and between the artistic research of the individual and the viewers traditionally seen as a nameless crowd. He proposes to subvert those criteria and create new identifications for viewers as opposed to traditional art valuations of producer and receiver – usually assessed by education and class. Due to its focus on the processes of cultural reception, McCollum’s work has often been set in the context of his contemporaries Michael Asher, Daniel Buren, Andrea Fraser, Louise Lawler, and Allan Ruppersberg.

Where: Galleria Fumagalli
When: Until 29 March 2024

Milano: “Vivi l’Archivio. Pier Fausto Bagatti Valsecchi e l’architettura di paesaggio”

An exhibition designed to highlight the archival material preserved by the Bagatti Valsecchi Foundation. The second appointment of this exhibition is dedicated to the architect Pier Fausto Bagatti Valsecchi (1929-2023) and his exceptional archive dedicated to the world of landscape architecture and gardens. A figure inextricably linked to the birth of the Bagatti Valsecchi Foundation - set up in 1975 out of a deep desire shared with his father Pasino and his sisters Cristina, Anna Maria and Fausta - Pier Fausto is a leading figure in the cultural events of Milan's post-World War II period. The wardrobe of the Camera Verde is transformed into an open archive, a place of memory that preserves testimonies that are presented as study material with which the visitor is invited to interact.  With this exhibition, the Museum pays homage to one of its founders with the material that Pier Fausto collected and produced with passion during his long life to share a concise theoretical, design and intellectual portrait of him. In fact, Pier Fausto Bagatti Valsecchi always upheld the specificity of gardens as monuments characterized by the presence of living materials, advocating the need to conceive the garden as both monument and document: elements that must be studied, compared and preserved.

Where: Museo Bagatti Valsecchi
When: Until 25 February 2024

Roma: “Architetture Inabitabili”

Born from the desire to explore the fascination and complexity of some uninhabitable architectures in Italy, the exhibition illustrates eight examples distributed throughout the country (the Gazometro in Rome; the Brion Memorial in Altivole; the semi-submerged bell tower of Curon, in Trentino-Alto Adige the Cretto in Gibellina; the Lingotto in Turin; the Ex Seccatoi in Città di Castello; Gio Ponti's Torre Branca; the Palmenti in Pietragalla) through a selection of images portraying them by type, use and period of construction. The exhibition is promoted by Roma Capitale, Assessorato alla Cultura, Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali, organised and realised by Archivio Luce Cinecittà, conceived by Cinecittà President Chiara Sbarigia and curated by Chiara Sbarigia with Dario Dalla Lana.  Among the approximately 150 images that are part of the exhibition, photos by great Italian authors such as Gianni Berengo Gardin, Guido Guidi, Marzia Migliora, Gianni Leone and many others stand out. Internationally, the images of Mark Power, Sekiya Masaaki and Steve McCurry stand out. Specially created for the exhibition are also the beautiful images by Francesco Jodice and Silvia Camporesi, from which the catalogue cover was taken.

Where: Musei Capitolini, Centrale Montemartini
When: Until 5 May 2024

Milano: “Mimesis. Ritratti animali”

The exhibition tells the story of the animal world and the relationship between man and the environment through the pictorial expression of twenty-three-year-old Marco Grasso , a young naturalistic artist, capturing, through the interaction between the portraits of the animals represented, not only the aesthetic dimension but also the interior one , with a careful look at biodiversity and environmental conservation.  The zebra, the lion, the wolf and the owl: well-known species caught in attitudes or situations that bring out their physical and character peculiarities , mix with other rarer and more threatened ones such as the Siberian tiger, the giant panda and the snow leopard. Alongside the hyper-realistic works, the exhibition also features some portraits made in four monochromes (blue, green, earth and red), which allude to recurring elements in nature and symbolically unite all the works as part of the same natural habitat. The animals portrayed thus emerge from the vision of a photographic shot into the abstract and conceptual dimension of contemporary painting, allowing us to enter an immersive naturalistic journey that leads us to know and explore the secrets and values ​​of the natural world. The exhibition is promoted by the Comune di Milano - Cultura and the Museo di Storia Naturale with the patronage of WWF Italia.

Where: Museo di Storia Naturale di Milano
When: Until 24 March 2024

Gerda Taro, Republican militiawoman training on the beach, outside Barcelona, August 1936. International Center of Photography, Gift of Cornell and Edith Capa, 1986 Courtesy International Center of Photography
 

Torino: “Robert Capa e Gerda Taro: la fotografia, l’amore, la guerra”

CAMERA presents Robert Capa and Gerda Taro: Photography, Love, War, a major exhibition that recounts with about 120 photographs one of the crucial moments in the history of 20th-century photography, the professional and emotional relationship between Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, which was tragically interrupted with the photographer’s death in Spain in 1937. The intense season of photography, war and love of these two extraordinary figures is narrated in the exhibition curated by Walter Guadagnini and Monica Poggi, through the photographs and the reproduction of some specimens of the famous “Mexican suitcase”, containing 4,500 negatives taken in Spain by the two protagonists of the exhibition and their friend and fellow photographer David Seymour, known as Chim. The suitcase, which was lost track of in 1939 was only found in 2007 in Mexico City, allowing for the correct attribution of a series of images whose author was unclear until then.

Where: CAMERA - Centro Italiano per la Fotografia
When: Until 2 June 2024