In the midst of the reconstruction that marks the Italian post-war, the textile industry experiences a strong re-launch and decides to join forces with the fervent artistic world. This is how some interesting and little-known collaborations between art and textile design are born. The exhibition presents various projects and designs for printing on fabric, made by renowned Italian artists on the occasion of the competitions organized by textile companies and presented to the public during the IX, X and XI editions of La Triennale di Milano (1951, 1954, 1957).
Partly inspired by the East and other ancient and remote Slavic and American civilizations, Gio Ponti, Bruno Munari, Fausto Melotti, Ettore Sottsass, Piero Dorazio and Roberto Crippa, have produced graphic designs for fabrics and other materials. In Gio Ponti we observe the recovery of Mediterranean colours: vivid, bright, intense colours; Southern tones skilfully calibrated on the broad compass of architectural rationalism of the 1950s and 1960s. In Munari and Melotti the recovery of childhood is a central aspect: a universe totally free from logical and rational schemes, a lyric world widely open to happiness, to the smiles of a life freed from heavy thoughts. In Sottsass and Dorazio we observe apparently more schematic and more geometric decorations, which still know how to find a lyrical and aerial light. In Crippa memories of Malevich and Kandinsky open happily to more warmly Mediterranean perspectives and signs.
The exhibition aims to introduce new facets of well-known artists, highlighting their artistic experimentation in the field of textile, as evidence of a historical period of creative rebirth that touched all areas of everyday life: textiles, architecture and design.