The review, curated by Marco Romanelli and Carlo Capponi with Natale Benazzi, Laura Lazzaroni and Andrea Sarto, organized by the Archdiocese of Milan by the will of the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Angelo Scola, is held on the occasion of the XXI International Exhibition of the Milan Triennale from title 21st Century. Design After Design will tell what architects, designers and artists have thought and designed for the commissioning of the Catholic Church or in any case representing the sacred, including works of art, photographs, furnishing objects, examples of architecture, musical compositions, by authors such as Lucio Fontana, Fausto Melotti, Francesco Messina, Mario Sironi, Nicola De Maria, Mimmo Paladino, Gio Ponti, Figini and Pollini, Vico Magistretti, Angelo Mangiarotti, Luigi Caccia Dominioni, Roberto Sambonet, Nanni Strada, Giulio Iacchetti, Afra and Tobia Scarpa, William Xerra, Gabriele Basilico, Mario Carrieri, Francesco Radino, Mario Cresci, Luciano Migliavacca, Luigi Picchi, Francis Poulenc, Igor Stravinsky, and many others.
The initiative invites the visitor to go beyond the object, artistic or design, in search of an implicit meaning contained in it, but which, however, does not elude the primary function for which the object is intended. Telling the story of some of these artifacts means showing a 'man creator', capable of looking beyond his pencil and designing the object based on 'rules' that refer to meaning, as well as the necessary technical functions.
The exhibition itinerary, organized by thematic areas, will open with the section dedicated to architecture which, thanks to the unpublished shots specially taken by Giovanni Chiaramonte, will make use of the environmental projection of some of the most important modern Milanese churches, i.e. those "places groups of quality" that Cardinal Angelo Scola considers of fundamental importance to welcome the various communities of the diocese, according to the line traced, in the mid-50s, by Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, then archbishop of Milan who, for first, he had the intuition to open the Church to the contemporary world, calling the most interesting artists and architects of the time to collaborate. The testimonies of architects such as Gio Ponti (San Francesco al Fopponino, 1964), Figini and Pollini (Madonna dei Poveri, 1952-1956), Vico Magistretti and Mario Tedeschi (Santa Maria Nascente al QT8, 1954) will then be analysed. -1955), Giovanni Muzio (San Giovanni Battista alla Creta, 1956-1958), Ignazio Gardella (San Francesco, INA Casa Village, Cesate, 1958), Luigi Caccia Dominioni (San Biagio, Monza, 1965-1967).
The exhibition will then collect excellence created by artists and designers who have dealt with the themes of the sacred and with the rules of the ritual, or with the Liturgy. Some contemporary types of sacred furnishings will be chosen, from crosses to chalices, from vestments to Evangelists, which will experience, thanks to the permanent collections of the Diocesan Museum, an unprecedented and effective comparison between ancient and modern. Alongside the masterpieces of 'sumptuary art', housed in the rooms of the Museum and covering a period of time from the XNUMXth to the XNUMXst century, you will therefore find contemporary creations such as the crosses by Giulio Iacchetti, Marta Laudani, Marco Ferreri, Emilio Nanni, Lorenzo Damiani , Studio Quattroassociati, the chasuble in laminated gold fabric by Nanni Strada and the goblets by Afra and Tobia Scarpa, Tito Amodei, Giuseppe Polvara or even the precious three-flame candlestick and the Ambrosian monstrance designed by Giovanni Muzio.
Particularly important is the section of the exhibition dedicated to painting and sculpture, where two Crucifixions by Lucio Fontana from private collections will meet (to be compared with the famous white Via Crucis of 1955, deposited by the Lombardy Region at the Diocesan Museum), sculptures by Francesco Messina (bust of Cardinal Schuster, from the Archiepiscopal Collection), by Fausto Melotti (Veronica, from the Melotti Foundation), by Emilio Greco (Head of an Apostle, in the Collections of the Paolo VI Foundation in Varese), as well as paintings by Mario Sironi (Christ carrying the Cross), William Congdon, Adolfo Wildt (Mater Misericordiae), Roberto Sambonet (Domes of the Saint in Padua) and William Xerra.
There will also be an analysis of the most interesting photographic research on sacred subjects, with shots by Giovanni Chiaramonte of St Elisabeth Kirche in Berlin, by Mario Cresci from The Massacre of the Innocents by Guido Reni or by Gabriele Basilico visiting the spiers of the Milan Cathedral , by Mario Carrieri who arrives in San Francisco to take up the light of Pier Luigi Nervi in St Mary Cathedral or by Francesco Radino who lingers on examples of the sacred in the Antona Traversi Chapel area in Meda.
The itinerary closes ideally with the section dedicated to music which will make it possible to rediscover figures of Lombard composers such as Luciano Migliavacca and Luigi Picchi and to listen again, with a program varied several times during the course of the exhibition, contemporary sacred music, not only for the use of the ritual properly said.
Silvana editorial catalogue.
