Fall exhibits at the Museo del 900

Three exhibits are in the program for the fall at the Museum of the Twentieth Century. Conversations. Photographs from the Merrill Lynch Bank of America Collection in the ground floor gallery space, Dada | Futurism. From the collections in Milan by Italo Rota and Vicente Todolì, offering a reading of the interactions between Dadaism and Futurism through the works in Milan collections and, in the museum's Focus Gallery, Kengiro Azuma 1961, exploring the work of the Japanese master.

Conversations.
Photographs from the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Collection
The exhibition is on loan to the Museo del Novecento as part of the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Art in our Communities® programme. It was originally curated by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where it was displayed from February to June 2011. The Italian iteration presented at the Museo del Novecento has been curated by Silvia Paoli, curator of photography at Milan's Castello Sforzesco.
The exhibition aims to initiate "conversations" between the works, covering a wide range of themes including portraits, landscapes, street photography and abstraction. By creating juxtapositions that contrast subjects, periods, approaches and techniques, the show highlights and suggests connections between the various artists, inspiring visitors to look more closely and to initiate dialogues of their own.
Showcased are photographs by some of the genre's most recognised names, from 19th century innovators Gustave Le Gray, Julia Margaret Cameron and Carleton Watkins, through to 20th century luminaries such as Alfred Stieglitz, Edwards Steichen, Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Harry Callahan and Irving Penn. Works from contemporary iconic image-makers, William Eggleston, Thomas Ruff, Cindy Sherman and Alec Soth also feature.

Dada | Futurism. From the collections in Milan
Developed at a distance of only a few years one from the other, before and after the Great War respectively, Dada and Futurism supported a new way of thinking about aesthetics and the role of the artist with the same fervent tone.
The selection of works is an opportunity for visitors to retrace these two important moments in the history of 20th century art. The attempt made by Futurists and Dadaists to link major artistic expression and the so-called minor arts emerges from the intense confrontation of collage, graphic compositions by Carrà and Depero, installations by Schwitters and photomontages by Heartfiel.

Kengiro Azuma 1961
The show, curated by Danka Giacon, focuses on Mu the plaster sculpture created in 1961by the Japanese artist. This date marks a key moment in Azuma's artistic development, namely the transition from a figurative practice, emulating the work of Marino Marini, his teacher at Brera, to a more abstract, autonomous expression.
In those years, Azuma, encouraged by the master himself, sought new forms; the inspiration came randomly, as the artist tells in his anecdotes, looking at a pile of wooden fruit crates in which he saw the rhythmic cadence between "solid" and void which then began to characterize his production, called, in fact, "Mu" referring to the concept of "void" in Japanese.
From that moment on, Azuma began to create true assemblages by juxtaposing wooden strips from the same boxes from which, at times, he removed the plaster sculptures which he worked with small marks or holes.