“Naturally” because the Mille Miglia brand, now universal, was born, like the competition of the same name, in this city. Just ninety years ago.
Today Mille Miglia is an exclusive "brand" that involves a whole series of events that go far beyond sporting competition.
For four days, from 18 to 21 May, the attention of an increasingly vast and international public is focused on what is rightly defined as "the largest traveling automobile museum". Which accompanies the ancient ladies who chase each other in the traditional Brescia - Rome - Brescia route.
Representing this real "universal legend" in an exhibition that paid homage to it without falling into the stereotypes of the photographs exhibited in all the windows of the historic center, decorated ad hoc during the event, was not a simple undertaking.
“It meant widening the field of investigation – say the curators – to lead it to a broader vision of the phenomenon linked to the automobile: “the myth of speed”, in its many forms. This seemed to us perhaps the most significant and direct way to dedicate to Brescia, on the 90th anniversary of the Mille Miglia, an exhibition capable of bringing together images and collecting, history and current events”.
It is an intense exhibition "telling" the birth of the epic race, from 1927, the year the Mille Miglia began, to that tragic afternoon of May 12, 1957, when the Great Race was marred by the accident involving the Ferrari 335 S no. 531 driven by the Spanish driver Alfonso de Portago and the American co-driver Edmund Gurner Nelson, on the straight between Cerlongo and Guidizzolo, on the Napoleonic Mantua-Brescia road.
Those first glorious pages of history are told by the images taken from the archives of the time but also from the newspapers and magazines which then, as now, made the company a legend.
The second section is entitled "From Futurism to the Smartphone". Here, starting from the original of Marinetti's "manifesto of futurism", passing through the poems of the Vate D'Annunzio, modern literature and the graphics of advertising posters, we arrive at the questioning of speed itself.
Coming from an important private collection, the third of the five sections of this great exhibition brings together highly collectible specimens from the first models of racing cars to the most popular pedal-operated tin cars for children.
The cinema could not be missing. With the most significant sequences of films where speed is addressed as a value but also as an opportunity for fun, with an ironic gaze. “From the “Sorpasso” by Risi, to the “Vigile” with Sordi, from “Crash” to the “All mad Beetle”:
Finally “Photographing the Mille Miglia”. With the choice of identifying 12 authors who, with their absolutely personal style, have photographed and interpreted the "myth" differently. To suggest the opportunity to also reflect on the photographic language, its use and its purposes. On display are images by Silvano Cinelli, Eros Mauroner, Ernesto Fantozzi, Laura Giancaterina, Basilio Rodella, Roberto Ricca, Richard B. Datre, Giacomo Bretzel, Paolo Mazzetti, Beppe Vigasio, Paolo Mucciarelli and Claudio Amadei.
It should be emphasized that “Mille Miglia. the myth of speed” offers its visitors the opportunity to admire, with a single ticket, the other major photographic exhibitions set up at the same Ma.Co.fe in Santa Giulia until 3 September. In the latter location, until September 3, you can admire "Magnum First" and "Magnum – La première fois" and the world premiere of Stev McCurry on the theme of reading.
