Milan effervescent, MIART and the Design Week

Art Basel Hong Kong has just concluded, Miart has inaugurated, the contemporary art fair in Milan, and the Salone has opened the design week in the Lombard capital. A schedule of events and exhibitions that makes your head spin animates every urban corner. The Design Week – until Sunday, April 13 – offers a wide range of showrooms, special openings, installations in historic courtyards, and amenities for the Fuorisalone: “5Vie”, Porta Venezia, and the Design Districts of Brera, Tortona, Isola, Durini…

Then Alcova, until April 13, involves 4 different sites: Villa Bagatti Valsecchi, Le Pasino Glasshouses, the SNIA factory, and Villa Borsani in Varedo.

For the Milano Art Week, 380 events are planned, ranging from exhibitions, performances, meetings with artists, and thematic routes.

We have selected for you some stands from MIART2025 and a handful of exhibitions not to be missed if you are in the city.

Some stands of the MIART fair

The atmosphere at the MIART fair was not the most positive. From April 2, 2025, known as Liberation Day, the trade tariffs imposed by Donald Trump have come into effect. Additionally, the very high VAT on artworks, which has not yet been reduced by the Italian Government, is a burden. However, the level of many stands was high and the participation was significant: as many as 179 galleries divided into the 3 sections Established, Emergent, and Portal. The idea is to join forces, adopting the values of collaboration and friendship, dear to Robert Rauschenberg. In fact, the centenary of his birth is being celebrated with an exhibition at the Museo del Novecento.

Pastorale by Nico Vascellari at Palazzo Reale

The exhibition Pastorale, curated by Sergio Risaliti – director of the Museo Novecento in Florence – will be open until June 2, 2025. The title wishes to convey a state of peace and temperance, a communion between spirit and body: «it contrasts with the traces of what happened to this hall back in 1943, when the Cariatidi were bombed. The Arcadian theme, the idyll, is perhaps the furthest thing from the disasters of war. But perhaps the function of such literary inventions was precisely this: to offer the human spirit a refuge, a happy island, to survive the violence of life and history, far from political intrigues and social conflicts» (from the catalog).
The Sala delle Cariatidi of Palazzo Reale is invaded by bull earth.

Leonor Fini at Palazzo Reale

Until Sunday, June 22, 2025 you can enjoy one of the most complete retrospectives dedicated to Leonor Fini (Buenos Aires, 1907 – Paris, 1996). Fini was an Italo-Argentinian artist who lived during her childhood in Trieste in a stimulating bourgeois environment (frequented by Italo Svevo, Umberto Saba) but shaken by the Fascist Ventennio. She moved to Paris in 1933 where she met some surrealist artists, Max Ernst, Paul Éluard, and Victor Brauner. Although she did not formally join the movement, she shared its techniques and dreamlike vein. The exhibition, curated by Tere Arcq and Carlos Martín, is promoted by the Comune di Milano – Cultura and produced by Palazzo Reale and MondoMostre, with the support of the Estate di Leonor Fini.

Rondinone and Anna Boghiguian at the Gam – Art Gallery of Milan

At the GAM – Galleria d’Arte di Milano, the solo exhibition Ugo Rondinone. Terrone, curated by Caroline Corbetta. The works of Ugo Rondinone (Switzerland, 1964) have been auctioned 732 times. He is best known for his land art works and his sculptures composed of colorful boulders like Seven Magic Mountains in Nevada.

Also at the GAM, previously unseen marble sculptures and other recent works by the Canadian-Egyptian artist of Armenian origin Anna Boghiguian (Cairo, 1946) are on display. The four faces of A man (The four faces of A man), open until the first of June, is curated by Edoardo Bonaspetti and boasts collaboration with the Fondazione Henraux.

The exhibitions at Hangar Bicocca

Tarek Atoui. Improvisation in 10 Days, curated by Lucia Aspesi, is open until July 20, 2025. It is the first exhibition encountered upon entering the Foundation, in the Shed space. Tarek Atoui (Beirut, Lebanon, 1980; lives and works in Paris) is known for his visual exploration that is one with musical investigation. He focuses on the acoustic properties and “the ways in which elements such as water, air, stone, and bronze absorb sound.”  Along with the catalog, a set of vinyls will be produced, collecting recordings of Atoui’s instruments’ activations by various international musicians.

ICARUS, the solo exhibition of Yukinori Yanagi, is curated by Vicente Todolí with Fiammetta Griccioli. Yukinori Yanagi (Fukuoka, 1959) lives and works on the island of Momoshima in Japan. The exhibition is a reflection on geo-politics, environmental disasters, and the unstable balances of current events. What does the near future hold for us?
The artist orchestrates a labyrinth of containers where the viewer immerses in darkness, with a blazing sun behind and a fragment of sky ahead. Excerpts from the book Sun and Steel (1968) by Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) take us by the hand. A warning? Outside the labyrinth of the Minotaur, designed by Daedalus, other traps ensnare man…Icarus’s wax wings might melt. The Greek concept of Hubris returns, the arrogance that leads the human being to fall.

The House of Dorothy at the Istituto Svizzero and the Design Week

Curated by the new Head Curator of the Istituto Svizzero di (Rome, Milan, Palermo) Lucrezia Calabro Visconti (Desenzano del Garda, 1990) and previously Head Curator of Pinacoteca Agnelli, The House of Dorothy is an exhibition that fits perfectly with the design week. You can enter, crawling, into the reconstruction of the house of this legendary and imaginary figure of the gay community and later of the LGBTQIA+ movement.

It is the first solo exhibition in Italy of the artist Vincent Grange (born in Geneva in 1997, lives and works in Geneva).

MEGA, the fair that changes location every year

The very young MEGA fair was founded by Mauro Mattei & Mattia Pozzoni. It closed like MIART on April 6 and changed location again this year, making a leap in quality. It moved to a post-industrial space in Via Orobia 26, in the Scalo di Porta Romana district. The curation of the edition was entrusted to Marta Orsola Sironi. She is one of the founders of co_atto, a project space dedicated to transdisciplinary research. The galleries involved 23.

The opening of MEGA was explosive with the performance by Ambra Castagnetti curated by Anna Vittoria Magagna, a curator of Roman origins active throughout the Peninsula but especially in Milan. The performance, in addition to the visual artist, involved Roxy Ceron (for the visuals) and Jack Bags (for the music production) and was presented by Supernature.

Palazzo Litta

Elle Decor Italia turns 35 years old and transforms Palazzo Bovara thanks to Patricia Urquiola

The talented architect and designer from Spain, Patricia Urquiola Hidalgo (Oviedo, 1961), known and loved worldwide, has been called upon for the 35th anniversary of Elle Decor Italia. The result is a refined operation that transforms Palazzo Bovara into a journey proposing a new way of living, beyond living and interior design: Alchemica.

Thus, one traverses the interiors of the Piano Nobile characterized by chromatic transitions, connected to the alchemical phases: nigredo, rubedo, and albedo. Finally, the encounter with the uroboro, the serpent biting its own tail, symbol of the cyclicity of existence. It represents the eternal return and the cyclical succession of distillations and condensations, essential for purifying the Materia Prima.

Together with Patricia Urquiola, the lighting by Valerio Tiberi @k5600design and the landscape by Antonio Perazzi. The values at play are, as explained by Livia Peraldo Matton, director of Elle Decor Italia: the fluidity of spaces, the relationship with nature, the connection between craft and industrial design, the focus on ecology.

The Design Art Week transforms Palazzo Castiglioni into a ‘Spanish Apartment’

The Liberty spaces of Palazzo Castiglioni in Corso Venezia 51 are transformed by the setup curated by Calvi & Brambilla into a Spanish Apartment. Striking are the marine motifs drawn on the walls, red tiles, panels that play with reflections, textile surfaces, ceramic coverings.

An exhibition in a luxury hotel, the project of the new The Art Society, founded by Andrea Vittoria Giovannini

Inside the Radisson Collection Hotel Santa Sofia, the exhibition ON THE UNSUSTAINABLE WEIGHT OF EMPTINESS will remain open until April 13. It is curated by Domenico de Chirico, an independent curator very active both in Italy and abroad. The project has as Art Partner The Art Society, a company created to build a bridge between companies and contemporary art with an investment and positioning consolidation perspective. The chosen focus is on young Italian talents under 40 years old. The Art Society was founded by Andrea Vittoria Giovannini, a collector and art advisor with a solid background in the field of design with her BlaBla.Agency. Who are the bull artists featured?

● Chiara Crepaldi (Legnano, 1993) – Sculptor and chaser, lives and works between Milan and Paris. After studying at the Accademia di Brera and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, she collaborated with important entities such as the Fondazione Pomodoro, the Fonderie de Coubertin, and the Fonderia Mapelli.

● Filippo Moroni (Castiglione del Lago, 1996) – Painter, lives and works in Milan. His research explores the tension between the body and the pictorial matter, giving life to ambiguous, opulent, and visually dense works.

● Sartorialitica – Multidisciplinary project that arises from the desire to preserve and reinterpret artisanal knowledge through design. Its works are distinguished by a material narrative that blends technique, tradition, and contemporary vision.

Triennale di Milano

The Triennale di Milano presents many exhibitors in addition to the temporary exhibitions. Among these is Oro by Ruffino, which commissions designers Agustina Bottoni, Beatrice Dettori, Uroš Milić, Studio Martinelli Venezia, and Studio Millim to reinterpret the meaning of connections. If the keyword is conviviality, gold is chosen as a symbol of transformation and elevation.

Giorgia Basili

She has collaborated for many years with art magazines such as Artribune, XIBT Contemporary, ArtApp, Insideart and Espoarte, preferring contemporary art in its many facets and media drifts.