Il Modo Italiano: Italian Design at Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Tuesday, 02 May 2006 11:50

Montreal, – The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts presents, until August 27, 2006, a major exhibition on design. Il Modo Italiano: Italian Design and Avant-garde in the 20th Century.  Covering the period from 1890 to today, it features 380 works that are among the most representative of the era, from furniture and glass to textiles and ceramics.  It also presents painting, sculpture, photography and architectural drawings. This is the first exhibition to explore the synergy between artistic experimentation and innovative design in twentieth-century Italy.  Organized around four themes, this original presentation explores the various ways of seeing and representing Italian industrial society, through the eyes of architects, artists and designers.  The exhibited works come from private and public collections, primarily in Italy, as well as the Liliane and David M. Stewart Collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. 

The exhibition is a production of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in co-operation with the Royal Ontario Museum and the Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto.

An International Success Story

Over the course of the twentieth century, Italian design has developed in a remarkable fashion and gradually imposed itself as a force to be reckoned with internationally. During its long period of industrialization and technological innovation, Italy capitalized on its regional and crafts traditions to become a leader in industrial design.  The exhibition will illustrate the gradual transition from the hand-crafted object, beautiful in its uniqueness, to industrial design and infinitely reproducible artifacts.

A great deal of what was produced in Italian design can be explained by the philosophical and aesthetic heritage of the humanist culture. From the dawn of the twentieth century, this heritage has been reinterpreted in various ways.  Almost every decade saw the emergence of new “philosophies” and “aesthetics,” which gave rise to innovative ideas that profoundly influenced the cultural debate on art and design: Futurism (Marinetti, Boccioni and Balla), Metaphysical Painting (De Chirico and Carrà), Rationalism (Terragni, Baldessari and Albini), the Novecento Italiano (Sironi, Muzio and Ponti) and, in the mid-1960s, Radical Design (Archizoom, Pesce, Mendini and several others) and Arte Povera (Pistoletto), which revived debate on the consumer society.  Then, after a rather sombre period in the 1970s, when Radical Design lost some of its drive, concepts of High Tech rationalism pushed designers to find simple mechanical forms for this new age.  This movement was followed by a reaction to the crisis of modernity in the late 1970s led by the Memphis Group (Ettore Sottsass) in the field of design, and by the Trans-avant-garde in the art world (Cucchi, Paladino and Clemente).

The Four Themes of the exhibition represent the philosophical, economic and aesthetic discourses of the various periods that shaped the recent history of art and design in Italy.

■ Boundless Optimism

The economic development of the early years of the twentieth century enabled the proliferation of attractive objects under the banners of Symbolism, Naturalism and Stile Floreale.

Signal works: Carlo Zen’s superb cabinet (1902); Angelo Morbelli’s painting In risaia (1901); Federico Tesio’s curvilinear desk and armchair (about 1898); the polychrome glass vase designed by Vittorio Zecchin (about 1914) and executed by the Vetreria Artistica Barovier, Murano; and two dresses with magnificent pleats produced by Mariano Fortuny (1920s and 1930s).

■ Monumentality and Rationalism

During the very distinctive political and cultural context of the interwar years and Fascism, various art movements (Futurism, Metaphysical Painting, the Novecento Italiano and Rationalism) intermingled.

Signal works: Renato Bertelli’s stunning Head of Mussolini (Continuous Profile) (1933); the movable set design painted in 1930 by Fortunato Depero for the ballet The New Babel; a stunning Alfa Romeo model from 1913, with a chassis designed by Count Ricotti; Gio Ponti’s porcelain vase The Classical Conversation (1926); Carlo Scarpa’s vase in blown glass (1939); and the reconstruction of Franco Albini’s Seggiovia Swing Armchair for the “Living Room of a Villa” presented at the VII Milan Triennale (1940).

■ Reconstruction and the Economic Miracle

After World War II and twenty years of dictatorship, the Anglo-Saxon term “design,” which had been unknown in Italy until that time, became the rallying cry that inspired new generations of urbanists and engineers involved in the reconstruction of a free civil society.

Signal works: Bruno Munari’s painting Yellow-red from the series “Negativo-positivo” (1951); Lino Sabattini’s tea and coffee service (1957) in silver-plated brass produced by Christofle; a classic Vespa 125 motorscooter (1955); Carlo Mollino’s Arabesco Table (1950) made of maple-faced plywood; Emilio Pucci’s playsuits with colourful patterns; and the Lexikon 80 Typewriter (1948) designed by Marcello Nizzoli for Olivetti.

■ Postmodern Testing Ground

In a world swept by the winds of change since the 1960s, the international success of Italian design has proven itself: the daringly utopian projects of Radical Design, by way of the High Tech of the 1970s and the Postmodernism of the 1980s (Memphis, Trans-avant-garde).

Signal works: Joe Colombo’s Tube Chair (1969-1970); Ettore Sottsass’s utopian project Experimental Environment for the exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1972); Proust’s Armchair (1978) by Alessandro Mendini; Ettore Sottsass’s Murmansk Fruit Dish (1982) in silver-plated brass; Mimmo Paladino’s painting Cuore di Russia (1984); and Fabio Novembre’s Org Table (2001), with its multitude of floating feet.

The exhibition design is by Nathalie Crinière, who did the design for the exhibition Cocteau. Enfant Terrible, in Paris and in Montreal in 2004. The exhibition is organized by Guy Cogeval, Director of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and Giampiero Bosoni, professor in the department of industrial design, art, communications and fashion at the Politecnico, Milan. The scholarly committee includes Diane Charbonneau, Curator of Non-Canadian Decorative Arts after 1960 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Rosalind Pepall, Curator of Decorative Arts at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Irene De Guttry and Paola Maino, Archivi, Arti Applicate Italiane del XX secolo, Rome; and Renata Ghiazza, curator, Casa Museo Boschi-De Stefano, Civiche Raccolte d’Arte, Milan.

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