The Fondazione Nicola Trussardi will once again emblazon the streets of Milan, this time with works by seventy artists for “ITALIA 70 – I NUOVI MOSTRI,” curated by Massimiliano Gioni, from April 8, 2024—on the occasion of miart, Milan’s international modern and contemporary art fair, and the city’s Art Week and Design Week.
In 2004, the Foundation’s “I NUOVI MOSTRI (Life is Beautiful)” project spread across the streets of Milan—from the city center to the suburbs. Thousands of posters created by sixteen young Italian artists depicted an anthology of visions of Italy and its multifaceted identity and irreverently took over public spaces.
Twenty years after this early venture into bringing contemporary art to unexpected places around the city, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi is returning to that same format. The latest iteration involves seventy artists working in Italy, including established as well as up-and-coming artists, in a public art project that continues to expand the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi’s mobile museum, which, for the past two decades, has been turning the city of Milan into a boundless stage for contemporary art.
The seventy artists have each been invited by the Foundation to create a new work or choose a particular image of theirs to be multiplied on hundreds of posters. The public poster campaign will take over the streets and squares and involve both locals and visitors in a “treasure hunt” of sorts from one end of the city to the other—drawing a new map of Milan from the Monumental Cemetery and old city center to CityLife and Porta Romana.
Together, the posters of “ITALIA 70 – I NUOVI MOSTRI” make up a temporary collection of art en plein air: a metropolitan museum camouflaged among the billboard advertisements and reflecting the desires and anxieties of Italy today.
“ITALIA 70 – I NUOVI MOSTRI” includes: Yuri Ancarani, Giulia Andreani, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Meris Angioletti, Marina Apollonio, Stefano Arienti, Micol Assaël, Vanessa Beecroft, Marco Belfiore, Elisabetta Benassi, Ruth Beraha, Simone Berti, Tomaso Binga, Monica Bonvicini, Lupo Borgonovo, Chiara Camoni, Ambra Castagnetti, Guglielmo Castelli, Maurizio Cattelan, Giulia Cenci, Francesco Clemente, Danilo Correale, Roberto Cuoghi, Enrico David, Binta Diaw, Patrizio di Massimo, Sara Enrico, Chiara Enzo, Alessandra Ferrini, Linda Fregni Nagler, Giuseppe Gabellone, Elisa Giardina Papa, Piero Golia, Massimo Grimaldi, Petrit Halilaj, Adelita Husni Bey, Luisa Lambri, Armin Linke, Lorenza Longhi, Marcello Maloberti, Margherita Manzelli, Diego Marcon, Masbedo, Jacopo Miliani, Daniele Milvio, Alek O., Adrian Paci, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, Diego Perrone, Alessandro Pessoli, Gabriele Picco, Paola Pivi, Maria Rapicavoli, Michele Rizzo, Pietro Roccasalva, Giangiacomo Rossetti, Andrea Salvino, Arcangelo Sassolino, Alessandro Sciarroni, Marinella Senatore, Elisa Sighicelli, Rudolf Stingel, Grazia Toderi, Patrick Tuttofuoco, Grazia Varisco, Nico Vascellari, Francesco Vezzoli, Sislej Xhafa, Shafei Xia.
“ITALIA 70 – I NUOVI MOSTRI” is part of a series of incursions undertaken since 2013 by the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi on the occasion of miart: including special projects, temporary shows, performances, and pop-up interventions that have brought to Milan international artists such as Darren Bader, Jeremy Deller, Agnes Denes, Gelitin, Sarah Lucas, Ibrahim Mahama, and Stan VanDerBeek.
The Fondazione Nicola Trussardi is a private nonprofit institution that, like a mobile museum, revives forgotten places and symbolic spaces throughout Milan, inviting leading artists from the international scene to reinvent the city, imagining new uses for buildings, squares, churches, monuments, and other emblematic Milanese landmarks. Its activities are only possible thanks to the generosity of its founding members and members of the Nicola Trussardi Foundation Circle, a group of supporters who back its projects.
Since 2003—under the chairmanship of Beatrice Trussardi and the artistic direction of Massimiliano Gioni—the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi has produced public artworks, temporary exhibitions, incursions, performances, and pop-up interventions by renowned international artists, including Allora & Calzadilla, Darren Almond, Pawel Althamer, John Bock, Maurizio Cattelan, Martin Creed, Tacita Dean, Jeremy Deller, Agnes Denes, Elmgreen and Dragset, Urs Fischer, Fischli and Weiss, Cyprien Gaillard, Gelitin, Ragnar Kjartansson, Sarah Lucas, Ibrahim Mahama, Diego Marcon, Paul McCarthy, Paola Pivi, Pipilotti Rist, Anri Sala, Tino Sehgal, Stan VanDerBeek, and Nari Ward, as well as presenting major themed exhibitions at Palazzo Reale and the Triennale.