The exhibition presents over 200 works including drawings, sculptures, architectural projects, renderings and models and design products, created from the early XNUMXs to today.
The exhibition, curated by Marco Meneguzzo and Emma Zanella, organized in collaboration with the Morandini Foundation, established in December 2016 with the aim of founding a museum dedicated to the artist, presents over 200 works including drawings, sculptures, architectural projects, renderings and models and design products, made from the mid-XNUMXs to the present day, which define Morandini's precise stylistic signature between art, architecture and design, from the early XNUMXs to the present day, coming from the Marcello Morandini Foundation and Museum.
The exhibition itinerary, organized by thematic nuclei, winds its way highlighting the main moments of his long creative journey, from personal exhibitions at the famous Galleria del Naviglio in the 1968s, to participation with a personal room at the XXXIV Venice Biennale of Art in 1986 and at the XLII Venice Biennale of Art and Sciences in 1969; from the artistic beginnings with the critical support of Germano Celant, Umbro Apollonio and Gillo Dorfles to the invitation to represent Italian art at the 6th Biennale of s. Paolo in Brazil, in Brussels at the Palais del Beaux Arts, for "Europalia", in Geneva in 1977 with Agostino Bonalumi and Gianni Colombo. Among the important milestones in his success are the important participation in Documenta 1982 in Kassel in XNUMX and in Documenta Urbana, also in Kassel in XNUMX with Attilio Marcolli and again the permanent installation of large sculptures in front of the German Museums: at the Museum Joseph Albers in Bottrop , the Museum für KonKrete Kunst in Ingolstadt, the Wilhelm Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen, the Europaisches Museum in Selb and the Das Kleine Museum in Weissenstadt.
Ample space is given to the design production which sees him collaborate with many Swiss, German, Japanese and Italian companies: Baleri, Belux, Boller Winkler, Brendel, De Sede, Fürstenberg, Gabbianelli, Girard Perregaux, Kartell, Kowa Osaka, Lantal Textile, Longoni, Marienza, Memorabilia New York, Philip Morris, Remuzzi, Rosenthal, Sawaya & Moroni, Silent Gliss, UnacTokyo, VorWerk. His objects are exhibited in many international museums.
The exhibition concludes with a section dedicated to the ambitious architectural projects that characterize Morandini's research since the 1946s, some of these mainly created in Germany, Singapore and Malaysia as well as in Varese, the city where he has lived since XNUMX.
Marcello Morandini's career is long in which geometric rigor and chromatic minimalism characterize, as Morandini himself was able to recall, "works that have been and are the partial fruit of a "Calvinist" research, which has marked over time my character too.
"The MA*GA - underlines Morandini again - does not want to be a classic retrospective but an exhibition to leaf through and read slowly, not necessarily words but, in this case, "forms" created in different years that meet here to tell their simple story”.
For MA*GA, the initiative dedicated to Marcello Morandini represents a new opportunity for relationship with the territory and at the same time for disseminating the cultural and artistic heritage that has been generated here. For this reason, during the opening period of the exhibition, a rich program of activities was studied - published on the website www.museomaga.it - such as guided tours, workshops for elementary and middle nursery schools, special projects for high schools and universities, days dedicated to families, in-depth conferences, meetings with the artist and much more.
The exhibition is the first public event of the Morandini Foundation, born on 7 December 2016 and whose museum headquarters in Varese will be completed after the restoration works at the end of 2017. The Foundation was in fact created with the aim of founding a museum dedicated to the artist, conserving and enhancing its works of art, design and architecture and promoting knowledge of the arts in general and in all their forms.
The Morandini Foundation pursues these aims through exhibitions, cultural events and conferences, research, publications and educational activities in collaboration with Italian and international museums and institutions.
