The Great Mother

At Palazzo Reale, Milan, the exhibition curated by Massimiliano Gioni speaks about the archetype of the mother, a symbol of creativity and a metaphor for art itself.

Anna Maria Maiolino, <i>Por um Fio [Per un filo]</i> dalla serie <i>Fotopoemação [Foto-poesia-azione]</i>, 1976. Fotografia in bianco e nero, 52 × 79 cm. Collezione Finzi, Bologna. Courtesy Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milano
“The Great Mother” – curated by Massimiliano Gioni, conceived and produced by Fondazione Nicola Trussardi together with Palazzo Reale – analyzes the iconography of motherhood in art and visual culture of the Twentieth century, from early avant-garde movements to the present.
From the Venuses of the Stone Age to the bad girls of the postfeminist era, and through centuries of religious works depicting innumerable maternity scenes, the histories of art and culture has often centered on the figure of the mother, often adopted as a symbol of creativity and metaphor for art itself. In the more familiar version of “Mamma”, it is also a stereotype closely tied to the image of Italy.
Vista della mostra “La Grande Madre” a cura di Massimiliano Gioni. Promossa da Comune di Milano | Cultura, ideata e prodotta dalla Fondazione Nicola Trussardi insieme a Palazzo Reale. Palazzo Reale, Milano. Photo: Marco De Scalzi. Courtesy Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milano
Top: Anna Maria Maiolino, Por um Fio [By a thread] from the Fotopoemação series [Photo-poem-action], 1976. Black-and-white photograph, 52 x 79 cm. Collection Finzi, Bologna. Courtesy Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan Above: View of the exhibition “The Great Mother”, curated by Massimiliano Gioni. Promoted by the Cultural Office of the City of Milan, conceived and produced by the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi in partnership with Palazzo Reale. Palazzo Reale, Milan. Photo: Marco De Scalzi. Courtesy Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milano

“The Great Mother” is an exhibition about women’s power: not just the life-giving creative power of mothers, but above all, the power denied to women and the power won by women over the course of the twentieth century. From the representation of motherhood, the exhibition moves out to trace a history of women’s empowerment, chronicling gender struggles, sexual politics, and clashes between tradition and emancipation.

Conceived as a temporary museum that blends art history with visual culture, the exhibition reconstructs a story that spans the twentieth century, exploring female icons and clichés of femininity, and developing a complex reflection on woman as an active participant in representation, no longer just a passive subject of it.

Vista della mostra “La Grande Madre” a cura di Massimiliano Gioni. Promossa da Comune di Milano | Cultura, ideata e prodotta dalla Fondazione Nicola Trussardi insieme a Palazzo Reale. Palazzo Reale, Milano. Photo: Marco De Scalzi. Courtesy Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milano
View of the exhibition “The Great Mother”, curated by Massimiliano Gioni. Promoted by the Cultural Office of the City of Milan, conceived and produced by the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi in partnership with Palazzo Reale. Palazzo Reale, Milan. Photo: Marco De Scalzi. Courtesy Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milano

The show opens with a presentation of the archive of Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, who throughout her life, starting in the Thirties, gathered thousands of images of female idols, mothers, matrons, Venuses and prehistoric deities into a vast iconographic collection that was used by Carl Gustav Jung, Erich Neumann and many other psychologists and anthropologists researching the archetype of the great mother and the matriarchal cultures of prehistory.

A major section of the exhibition focuses on women in the early avant-garde movements, specifically, in Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism. Showing the work of women artists alongside the male artists who have dominated the histories of these movements, it highlights both contradictory and complementary attitudes that defined modernity while analyzing the radical transformations of gender roles that accompanied the profound economic and societal changes of the early twentieth century.

The conceptual epicenter of the second part of the exhibition is a selection of works by Louise Bourgeois, who assimilated and transformed the influence of Surrealism, melding it with references to archaic cultures, to create a personal mythology of extraordinary symbolic power.
Vista della mostra “La Grande Madre” a cura di Massimiliano Gioni. Promossa da Comune di Milano | Cultura, ideata e prodotta dalla Fondazione Nicola Trussardi insieme a Palazzo Reale. Palazzo Reale, Milano. Photo: Marco De Scalzi. Courtesy Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milano
View of the exhibition “The Great Mother”, curated by Massimiliano Gioni. Promoted by the Cultural Office of the City of Milan, conceived and produced by the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi in partnership with Palazzo Reale. Palazzo Reale, Milan. Photo: Marco De Scalzi. Courtesy Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milano
Many works on view delineate an image of the mother as a projection of individual and collective desires, anxieties and aspirations, both male and female. Perhaps a less reassuring vision than the one we are used to from advertising and other rhetoric, but unquestionably more complex and powerful.
Rounding out the exhibition is the Italian premiere of the performance Teaching to walk by Roman Ondák, which centers on an unpredictable moment: a child’s first steps. Every day through November 15, a mother will be invited to try teaching her baby to walk in the exhibition space.
Vista della mostra “La Grande Madre” a cura di Massimiliano Gioni. Promossa da Comune di Milano | Cultura, ideata e prodotta dalla Fondazione Nicola Trussardi insieme a Palazzo Reale. Palazzo Reale, Milano. Photo: Marco De Scalzi. Courtesy Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milano
View of the exhibition “The Great Mother”, curated by Massimiliano Gioni. Promoted by the Cultural Office of the City of Milan, conceived and produced by the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi in partnership with Palazzo Reale. Palazzo Reale, Milan. Photo: Marco De Scalzi. Courtesy Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milano

The exhibition The Great Mother is accompanied by a catalogue edited by Massimiliano Gioni, to be published in two languages, Italian and  English, by Skira Editore. The volume brings together more than three hundred color images, illustrating monographic texts and indepth information on all the artists in the exhibition and a collection of new essays and criticism, written specifically for the occasion by Marco Belpoliti, Barbara Casavecchia, Whitney Chadwick, Massimiliano Gioni, Ruth Hemus, Raffaella Perna, Lucia Re, Pietro Rigolo, Adrien Sina, Guido Tintori, Calvin Tomkins, and Lea Vergine.

The graphic design for the exhibition and publishing products is by Goto Design, New York.


August 26 – November 15, 2015
The Great Mother
curated by Massimiliano Gioni
promoted by Comune di Milano | Cultura
Conceived and produced by Fondazione Nicola Trussardi
in partnership with Palazzo Reale
for ExpoinCittà 2015
with the support of BNL Gruppo BNP Paribas
Palazzo Reale
piazza Duomo 12, Milano

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