Molteni&C and GAM (Milan’s Galleria di Arte Moderna) present 80!Molteni, an exhibition showcasing, for the first time, 80 years’ experience, quality and innovation on the part of Molteni&C, founded by Angelo and Giuseppina Molteni in Giussano in 1934.
In an exhibition curated by Jasper Morrison with graphic project by Studio Cerri & Associati, for the first time visitors can see the prototypes and the most iconic products of the Group’s four companies: Molteni&C (home furniture), Unifor (office furniture), Dada (kitchen furniture) and Citterio (office furniture and partition walls).
But the show also tells the Italian story of a business that started up in the 1930s as a firm of artisan furniture makers, to develop in the 1950s on an industrial scale, boasting partnerships with Italian and international architects and designers, such as Foster+Partners, Jean Nouvel, Álvaro Siza, Pier Luigi Cerri, Michele De Lucchi, Rodolfo Dordoni, Ferruccio Laviani, Luca Meda, Dante Bonuccelli, Aldo Rossi, Afra and Tobia Scarpa, Hannes Wettstein, Patricia Urquiola, Ron Gilad, Werner Blaser and Richard Sapper. Right through to remakes of a collection of furniture designed by Gio Ponti between 1935 and 1970.
The 80! exhibition commemorates an entire epoque, also in the encounter with another towering figure of 20th-century Italian creativity, Ignazio Gardella. The interior layout of the gallery, designed by the Milanese architect, reflects his desire to recreate the spirit and taste for home interiors typical of 1950s’ Milan.
The original gallery, recently restored, houses the private collections created by Carlo Grassi and Giuseppe Vismara, two examples of leading industrialists and entrepreneurs with a passion for art. A passion that is renewed today, as in the past, in the rooms of the gallery’s Permanent Collection with works by Corot, Cezanne, Manet, De Nittis, Balla, Boccioni, Morandi, Picasso, Renoir, Modigliani, among others, as well as the icons of Italian design.
Lastly, the 80!Molteni exhibition is hosted in the Villa Reale, home to the GAM, a perfectly preserved masterpiece of Lombard neoclassicism, and an example of the decorative design and engineering innovati
