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, ncluding Marinella Senatore, 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.