Within the scope of a recent rediscovery of Twenties culture and art and, markedly, of that distinctive taste called “1925 Style”, from the year of the well-known Universal Exhibition of Paris dedicated to Arts Decoratifs, which gave way to the fortunate Art Deco formula that endorsed its morphology and shape, comes an idea for an exhibition which proposes images and reinterpretations of a series of historic-cultural events and artistic phenomena which travelled through Italy and Europe.
Deco taste was the style of movie theatres, railway stations, theatres, of transatlantics, public buildings and large middle-class residences: most of all, it was a stylistic formula with clearly recognizable traits. It influenced at different levels the entire production of decorative arts, from furnishings to ceramics, from glass to wrought iron, from jewellery to fabrics to fashion in the 1920s and early 1930s, like the shape of motorcars, advertising signs, sculpture and painting for decorative purposes
Most of all, the exhibition will have an Italian interpretation, bearing witness to the international biennials of decorative arts of Monza in 1923, 1925, 1927 and 1930 as well as the Expos of Paris in 1925 and 1930 and of Barcelona in 1929. The Deco phenomenon crossed the 1919-1929 decade with a disruptive force with furnishings, ceramics, glass, processed metals, fabrics, bronzes, stuccos, jewels, silverware and garments impersonating the vigour of finely crafted and proto industrial production and contributing to the birth of design and “Made in Italy”.
The demand of a market thirsty for innovation, but at the same time nostalgic of the tradition of Italian artistic craftsmanship, led to an explosion of extraordinary production of objects and decorative shapes in the Twenties: from the lighting fixtures of Martinuzzi, of Venini and Fontana Arte of Pietro Chiesa, to the ceramics of Gio Ponti and Guido Andlovitz, from the sculptures of Adolfo Wildt, Arturo Martini and Libero Andreotti, to the Lenci statues or to the highly original sculptures of Sirio Tofanari, from the Byzantine jewellery of Ravasco to the silverware of Finzi, from the furnishings of Buzzi, Ponti, Portaluppi, to the precious silk of Ravasi, Ratti and Fortuny, like the cloth tapestries by Depero.
The purpose of the exhibition is to show the public the qualitative level, novel features and importance which modern decorative arts have had on the Italian artistic culture denoting the features of Deco, also in relation to figurative arts: great painting and great sculpture. Here the tales of the works of Galileo Chini, painter and potter are essential alongside the great masters like Vittorio Zecchin and Guido Andlovitz, who were inspired by Klimt and the Viennese Secession; of the masters of Faenza Domenico Rambelli, Francesco Nonni and Pietro Melandri; the inventions of the second Futurism of Fortunato Depero; the paintings, among others of Severini, Casorati, Martini, Cagnaccio di San Pietro, Bocchi, Bonazza, Bucci, Marchig, Oppi, all accompanied by the extraordinary production of Richard-Ginori conceived by the architect Gio Ponti and by emblematic French Austrian and German examples until the baton is passed on, in the early Thirties, to the USA and American Deco.

Such a complete exhibition dedicated to this rich world of inventions has never been staged in Italy. Not only does it produce fascinating contaminations with modern taste, e.g. the Coppedè district of Rome or the Vittoriale (villa-museum) of the Italians, which was the last residence of Gabriele D’Annunzio, but it also calls forth atmospheres of the Mediterranean world of classicism, in the same way that the 1922 discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamen re-launched the fashion of Egypt in Europe. Persian, Japanese, African echoes suggest distance and otherness, dreams and escapes from everyday life, in a continuous and illusory back and forth from modernity to history.

As this is a taste and a style of life there was no shortage of influences and affinities with the cinema, theatre, literature, magazines, fashion and music. From Hollywood (with the Parade by Lloyd Bacon or film stars, such as Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich or Rodolfo Valentino) to the unforgettable pages of The Great Gatsby (1925), by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, to Agatha Christie, Oscar Wilde, Gabriele D’Annunzio.

Tickets.
Adult € 12
Reduced fee € 10: for groups (more than 15 people), children 15-18, senior (over 65), special conventions
holders (see the list at the entrance of museum), students.
Reduced fee € 5: children 6 -14
Free: children under 6 years, one guest for each group, helpers, journalists, tour guide, disabled.

Visiting hours.
From Tuesday to Friday: 9.30 am - 7.00 pm Saturday, Sunday, holidays, April 17h and 24th, and May 1st : 9.30 am - 8.00 pm. The box office closes one hour before time stated. Closed on Mondays.