A major exhibition at Palazzo Reale and three exhibition 'chapters' hosted by three major Milanese museums, accompanied by a multidisciplinary programme of initiatives across the city: 'Metafisica/Metafisiche' is the project curated by Vincenzo Trione, which brings the masters of Metaphysical art into dialogue with their international “heirs” and with the “followers” of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Promoted by the Italian Ministry of Culture and the Municipality of Milan, the project is produced by Palazzo Reale, Museo del Novecento, Grande Brera–Palazzo Citterio and Gallerie d’Italia, in collaboration with the publishing house Electa, and forms part of the cultural programme of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The exhibition 'Modernità e malinconia' at Palazzo Reale is realised with the scientific collaboration of the Giorgio and Isa de Chirico Foundation and the Museo Morandi, with the participation of the Alberto Savinio Archive and the Carlo Carrà Archive.
At Palazzo Reale, more than 400 works are on display, including paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings, design objects, as well as architectural models and maquettes, illustrations, comics, magazines, videos and vinyl records. The exhibition features national and international loans from over 150 public and private institutions, galleries, archives and prestigious private collections.
From the protagonists of the historic group founded in Ferrara in 1917—Giorgio de Chirico, Alberto Savinio, Carlo Carrà, Filippo de Pisis and Giorgio Morandi—to the artists in Europe and America who absorbed the movement’s atmospheres and formal solutions, and on to contemporary echoes in the works of various authors inspired by Metaphysical poetics across the fields of art, photography, architecture, cinema, theatre, design, fashion, literature, graphic novels and music. From Mario Sironi to Felice Casorati, from René Magritte to Max Ernst, from Salvador Dalí to Andy Warhol. And further still, from Mimmo Paladino to Giulio Paolini, from Jannis Kounellis to Francesco Vezzoli, from Aldo Rossi to Gio Ponti, from Paolo Portoghesi to Frank Gehry, from Mimmo Jodice to Gabriele Basilico, from Giorgio Armani to Fendi, from Paolo Sorrentino to Tim Burton, through to David Bowie and many others besides.
“Distant and disparate episodes, which seem to have nothing in common, born of the imagination of artists far removed from one another in generational, cultural and linguistic terms,” explains the curator. “And yet, albeit along secret paths and not always in a fully intentional manner, these voices share a common stance: a distinctive manière de voir, inspired by a lateral, clandestine and perhaps marginal poetic experience, which took shape more than a century ago in a provincial city, situated outside history.”
“From Piazza Duomo to Brera there are two thousand steps of art: the route that begins on 28 January with 'Metafisica/Metafisiche' in the rooms of Palazzo Reale will take in the Museo del Novecento and the Gallerie d’Italia in Piazza della Scala, before concluding at Palazzo Citterio,” states the Councillor for Culture, Tommaso Sacchi. “A sentimental map at the heart of Milan, connecting physical spaces and works of art, and evoking an idea of the city as a diffuse museum, one that can also be explored on foot and is capable of bringing past and present, great masters and contemporary perspectives into dialogue. An ambitious and collective project that restores Metaphysical art to its generative force and invites citizens and visitors alike to rediscover Milan as a place of thought, imagination and vision.”
At the Museo del Novecento, within the Ettore and Claudia Gian Ferrari Archives, a section is devoted to an in- depth exploration of the relationship between Metaphysical art and Milan. It examines the in some respects surprising bond between certain protagonists of the group led by de Chirico and the city itself—an artistic and intellectual crossroads, but also a laboratory for experimentation and dialogue between the arts.
Within the exhibition space, visitors encounter a selection of drawings, maquettes, costumes, archival materials and photographs, bearing witness to the activity of de Chirico, Savinio and Carrà in the Lombard capital and to their collaboration with some of the city’s most important artistic and cultural institutions. Particular emphasis is placed on set and costume designs produced by the artists between the 1940s and 1950s for Teatro alla Scala, as well as period photographs and preparatory drawings for Bagni Misteriosi, created for the Triennale di Milano.
A further focus is dedicated to Ascolto il tuo cuore, città (1944) by Alberto Savinio, a work that encapsulates “all the ‘carnal’ love that a man can feel for a city”. This documentary novel is the subject of a series of ten plates by Mimmo Paladino, entitled Disegni per Savinio, in which the artist extracts situations and atmospheres to compose the sequences of a kind of involuntary drawn film with a neo-realist imprint, governed by a finely calibrated interplay between fidelity and infidelity, between fragments of writing and visions.
At the Gallerie d’Italia – Milano, the Intesa Sanpaolo museum in Piazza Scala, in dialogue with the works housed in the vaults, a tribute to Morandi is presented through the photographs by Gianni Berengo Gardin dedicated to the painter’s Bolognese studio.
At Palazzo Citterio, the Grande Brera hosts an unprecedented homage by William Kentridge, likewise dedicated to Giorgio Morandi. Kentridge’s intervention unfolds in two parts: a sound video installation and a sequence of cardboard sculptures, which poetically reinterpret everyday objects—the protagonists of Morandi’s still lifes. This approach establishes an ideal dialogue with the Metaphysical works by the Bolognese master preserved at Palazzo Citterio. In keeping with the curatorial framework of 'Metafisica/Metafisiche,' Kentridge’s installation highlights Morandi’s formal and conceptual legacy and revisits an expressive practice in which time, memory and rhythm become visual matter.
