The exhibitions not to be missed: from 13 to 31 March

Italy 50. Fashion and design. Birth of a style, Palazzo Attems Petzenstein, Gorizia, from March 21st to August 27th

Made in Italy fashion and design are at the center of this great exhibition which identifies the birth of Italian style precisely in the 1950s, in that post-war period that was so creative and particularly prolific for the country that it went down in history as the Italian miracle.

Carla Cerutti, Enrico Minio Capucci and Raffaella Sgubin, curators of the exhibition, focused on a very specific period of time, the one between the elections of April 18, 1948 and the Rome Olympics of 1960, corresponding to the economic and cultural rebirth, between craft industry and cinema.

The result is a very rich exhibition. For the design section, among others, the furniture by Franco Albini, Gio Ponti, Carlo Mollino, Ico Parisi, Marco Zanuso, Vico Magistretti, Luigi Caccia Dominioni, made by Poggi, Cassina, Fornasetti, Arflex, Azucena, Tecno , Fontana Arte, Rima.

Then there are the avant-garde lamps by Gino Sarfatti, Angelo Lelii, Max Ingrand and the Castiglioni brothers, the ceramics entrusted to industrial production by Guido Andloviz, Antonia Campi, Giovanni Gariboldi, Piero Fornasetti, Ettore Sottsass and the more "niche" ones created by Guido Gambone, Guerrino Tramonti, Salvatore Meli, Pietro Melandri, Alessio Tasca, Clara Garesio, but also "artistic" by Lucio Fontana, Fausto Melotti and Leoncillo Leonardi.

The very rich and extraordinary Muranese production is naturally on display with Venini & C., Aureliano Toso, Barovier & Toso and Archimede Seguso, as well as the submerged glass of Flavio Poli and the polychrome reactions of Giulio Radi.

And then the furnishings, the fabrics, the carpets, the appliances (including the Mirella sewing machine produced by Necchi, designed by Marcello Nizzoli and awarded with the Compasso d'Oro).

As for fashion, the official birth of Italian fashion dates back to 1951.

In that year, Giovan Battista Giorgini had the intuition to bring together in Florence the most important creative talents of the moment, selected among those who chose not to be inspired by the trends coming from Paris, to kick off the season in the Sala Bianca of Palazzo Pitti: an exceptional scenography for the fashion shows that laid the foundations of the Italian Fashion phenomenon.

On display, a selection of clothes and accessories, by Emilio Pucci, Emilio Schuberth, Roberto Capucci, Sorelle Fontana, Biki, Curiel, Marucelli, Gucci and Salvatore Ferragamo, to name a few. They are the ones who dressed the stars of Hollywood and our own, from Ava Gardner to Marilyn Monroe, from Elizabeth Taylor to Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida.

Who will like it: those who think that style is everything, from choosing the sofa to the bag to wear, those who love Italy style, those who want to dive into history.

Useful information: Palazzo Attems – Petzenstein, Piazza Edmondo De Amicis 2, Gorizia, open from Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 6pm.

Building the future. Infrastructures and benefits for people and territories, Triennale, Milan, until March 26

These are the last days to visit the exhibition on the world of infrastructure created by the Triennale together with Webuild, a leading group in the sector on a global scale.

The story starts with Webuild's achievements around the world to show the impact that those projects have on the territory and on people, and then discuss with a selection of installations by architects, landscape architects, artists and thinkers, which intend to stimulate reflection on the value of infrastructures in different communities.

The driving force behind this exhibition is also an extremely current consideration: the desire and need for change in today's Italy, made possible thanks to the PNRR.

"This opportunity offered by the PNRR puts us in front of a great challenge, that of creating sustainable infrastructures and work with them, giving a future to the next generations", said Pietro Salini, managing director of Webuild, who then continues: «With this exhibition, we celebrate the symbol of what it means to build the future of others».

Eight sections, each in dialogue with a site-specific installation, accompanied by critical insights – curated by Nina Bassoli and designed for the occasion by Fosbury Architecture, Michel Desvigne Paysagiste, Bureau Bas Smets, Studio Ossidiana with Giovanni Hänninen, Superflux, Catherine Mosbach with Shandor Chury (OVVO Studio) – to open the reflection and gaze at the ecosystems in which infrastructures take up space. And think about the future. Of all.

Who will like it: lovers of cities undergoing transformation, those thinking of a possible future, those who believe in the power of design.

Useful information: Triennale Milano, viale Alemagna 6, open from Tuesday to Sunday from 11 to 20.

RETROFUTURE. Notes for a collection, Macro, Rome, from March 17 to date to be defined.

What is retrofuture? First of all, an idea. That of rethinking the collection of the Macro museum for the new generations, superimposing different temporal planes with the aim of stimulating a reflection on the very meaning of a contemporary art collection.

Not easy, huh? In fact it is not and the Museum for Preventive Imagination has been working on it for years and for this spring-summer session several works are on the calendar which will alternate against the background of blow-ups from the archives of the Macro, made by Giovanna Silva.

Her Catabasi , has given visibility to the works preserved in inaccessible places, opening the doors to a reflection on the status of the work of art in an era in which it is increasingly mediated by images. Not only.

On that occasion, the idea of a meta-collection was also born, designed to welcome a new nucleus of works by young Italian artists until the end of 2023 in a stratification of generations and languages.

The Retrofuturo is therefore also an accumulation of works and stories in a catalog without a common thread, in a collective dimension that defines a common landscape.

From 17 March Monia Ben Hamouda, Beatrice Celli and Diego Gualandris join Federico Antonini, Riccardo Benassi, Ruth Beraha, Carola Bonfili, Costanza Candeloro, Ludovica Carbotta, Giulia Cenci, Alessandro Cicoria, Gianluca Concialdi, Giulia Crispiani, Giorgio Di Noto, Roberto Fassone, Irene Fenara, Giorgia Garzilli, Lorenza Longhi, Eleonora Luccarini, Beatrice Marchi, Diego Marcon, Jim C. Nedd, Francis Offman, Parasite 2.0, Francesco Pedraglio, Margherita Raso, Real Madrid, SAGG NAPOLI, Davide Stucchi and Ilaria Vinci with their proposals and visions.

Who will like it: the visionaries, the hunters of ideas, the explorers of our time.

Useful information: Macro, via Nizza 138, Rome, open from Tuesday to Friday from 12 - 19; Saturday and Sunday from 10 to 19.

Rä di Martino, Play, Audience | Palazzo Galeano, Lodi, until 10 May

This exhibition by Rä di Martino is entitled Play and consists of stands, colored lights and films, all that is usually needed to illuminate a face, the protagonist of a photographic story.

But the face is not there and the story is made only by the materials, the 'tools of the trade'. Which reveal their relationship not only with the exhibition spaces, but above all with the public.

Even better, with the unconscious of the visitor, object of the manipulation of the television and cinematographic media in the perception of reality. In short, di Martino observes the relationship that everyone's memory and private and mental dynamics establish with the culture disseminated by the media, such as fiction and advertising.

She tells a story of colors and lights , of unveiled tricks and pretenses to reveal, through photographic and video work, supported by music and literature, one (or many?) Vision of the world.

Who will like it: those who are attentive to current artistic proposals, those who believe that art rhymes with research and those who like minimalism

Useful information: Platea Gallery, Palazzo Galeano, Corso Umberto I 50, Lodi, always open.

Giacometti - Fountain. The search for the absolute, Palazzo Vecchio Museum and Lucio Fontana. L'origine du monde, Museo Novecento, Florence, until June 4

It had never happened that Giacometti and Fontana met, at least not at an exhibition level: no exhibition had ever taken the courage to approach them, put them in dialogue.

Nevertheless. Yet they are the same age and their 'obstinate' research, as defined by Sergio Risaliti, director of the Museo Novecento and creator of both exhibitions, certainly unites them.

Thus The search for the absolute, as the title of this sculptural and also intimate confrontation suggests, highlights a reflection on the truth in art, on the experience of both matter and imagination, on the balance - bordering on instability - between the primordial dimension of time and the cosmological dimension of space.

Thus the dream guides the spatial research of the spectator, who will be forced to question himself about the past, the present and above all to imagine the future.

Or continue towards the Museo Novecento and immerse yourself in an in-depth study dedicated to Lucio Fontana, this time busy thinking about the origin of the world: an exhibition that arises from the desire to explore some aspects of the work of the Italian master -Argentine, such as the original relationship between artistic creation, procreation and birth of life in the universe, and the relationship between the finite and infinite world.

Who will like it: two intriguing exhibitions, which will appeal to those who want depth.

Useful information: The Giacometti - Fontana exhibition in Palazzo Vecchio, Piazza della Signoria (Florence), is open until 4 June from Monday to Sunday from 09 - 19 and Thursday 09 - 14. The Lucio Fontana exhibition. L'origine du monde at the Museo Novecento, piazza Santa Maria Novella 10 (Florence) is open every day from 11 to 20, closed on Thursdays, until 13 September.

Adam McEwen. XXIII, Gagosian, Rome, until 21 April.

There is an object in everyday life that has been with us for decades now: the ballpoint pen, an extraordinary invention of industrial design from the last century.

The works of Adam McEwen are dedicated to this object, who narrates its linearity as well as its creative ability, enhancing its iconic nature.

Transparent, stylized, colored, linear ballpoint pens are thus the protagonists of a figurative story between the mechanical and the symbolic, between the Dadaist and the playful in works that tell the history of art (such as Big Spear, which recalls the melee of spears in Paolo Uccello's Battle of San Romano), contemporaneity (as in Procession, where the sense of regularity and order is called into question by a pen that breaks ranks), and the oneiric ( Good Night replaces the straight lines of the pens with fantastically wavy shapes). Why this title? XXIII, like the year in which McEwen created these works.

Who will like it: those who believe that objects define worlds and design also projects dreams.

Useful information: Gagosian, via F. Crispi 16, Rome, open from Tuesday to Saturday from 10.30am to 7pm.

Jacopo Di Cera. Infinity, Ninfa Labs, Milan, from March 16 to 25

It is drones that create the story that Jacopo Di Cera shows on contemporary man as he moves through time and space.

Shots from above generate an infinite loop, as the title suggests, in which the individual is just the piece of a huge puzzle, made up of other spaces and times others, where the seasons blend seamlessly.

This suspension temporal space is guaranteed by the set-up: 14 screens onto which shots taken by drones are projected, in an inextricable and fluid succession of seasons, where the concept of time takes center stage.

Together with the Italianness that the author continues to investigate, after his previous series Italian Summer, this time also in other territories (and, as has been said, other seasons).

Who will like it: photography enthusiasts, those looking for ironic and unusual looks, those who want to discover new ways of expressing themselves artistically.

Useful information: Ninfa Labs, via dell'Aprica 16, Milan, from Monday to Friday from 11am to 5pm.