The MA*GA wears Missoni

Missoni, L’Arte, Il Colore, the great exhibition that the MA*GA Museum has set up to pay tribute to the creativity of the fashion house that is universally recognised, is almost a return to the origins. It was in Gallarate, in 1953, that Rosita and Ottavio Missoni decided to open their first workshop for knitwear. It was also in those years that the foundation was being laid for the future museum that, in 1995, would dedicate an exhibition to them, “The Ottavio and Rosita Missoni Story”. It was from that first experience that the creative journey of the Missonis began, as the Missoni name became synonymous with quality, beauty and, above all, colour, in the world of fashion, and the extraordinary genius of the two founders became part of the world of twentieth-century European art.

The exhibition Missoni, Art, Colour leads the visitor among one hundred works by European artists from whom the Missonis took inspiration on their long, cultural and artistic journey. It opens with the video installation by Ali Kazma, on the company’s creative process: from the woollen yarn, to the fabric, to the final product. There follows a section dedicated to roots, where there is a display of works by masters, including Giacomo Balla, Fortunato Depero, Sonia Delaunay, Lucio Fontana, Fausto Melotti, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, who made European art history, reviving the search for colours, space, rhythm, signs and matter.

The journey through the exhibition continues with a series of very absorbing installations, designed by Luca Missoni and Angelo Jelmini, in which large balls of coloured wool symbolise the plain, more genuine raw material, which is transformed to become yarn and then fabric. On display, an extremely rich sample of historic fabrics that characterised some of the fashion house’s most beautiful clothes.

There is then a section dedicated to dialogues, that is, to the occasionally very close relationship with the artistic culture of the day. Beside the works on colour, by Ottavio Missoni, there is a lovely display of works by artists that characterised the abstract search for signs and colours that followed the Second World War: Alberto Burri, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Roberto Crippa, Luigi Veronesi, and Dadamaino, among others.

In the last hall, in a new installation created with the most significant works, we can see Ottavio Missoni. Large patchwork tapestries of knitted fabric, arranged in a contemplative multimedia space.

A catalogue, edited by Luciano Caramel, Luca Missoni and Emma Zanella, has been printed by Rizzoli to accompany the exhibition. A corollary of the exhibition is a vast programme of secondary activities and teaching events.

MISSONI, L’ARTE, IL COLORE

Gallarate, MA*GA Museum (Via De Magri 1)
19 April – 8 November 2015
Inauguration: 18 April 2015, 6.30 p.m.
Opening times: from Tuesday to Friday, 10 a.m. – 7 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.; closed Monday.

Entrance: €10, full price. €8, for groups of 15 or more, and special categories; FAI (the Italian National Trust) card holders. €5, students up to the age of 26 years. Free to anyone under the age of 14 years, the over 65, the disabled who need to be accompanied, the person accompanying a disabled person; MiBACT employees; Lombardy Region tourist guides, 1 teacher for every 10 students, ICOM members, AMACI members, accredited journalists, holders of the membership card of the journalists’ register, with a valid identity card.