On the occasion of miart, taking place from April 17 to 19, Fondazione Fiera Milano is making a selection of its contemporary art collection accessible to the public. The initiative focuses on two days—April 18 and 19—and includes guided tours at the Foundation’s headquarters, the Palazzina degli Orafi, one of the oldest pavilions of the fairgrounds dating back to 1923, where the works are usually housed and not open to visitors.
The opening retains a clearly occasional character. The collection, launched in 2012 through an annual acquisition fund linked to miart, is conceived as an internal asset and as a tool to support the fair, which has by now become a stable cultural attraction for Milan. To date, the collection includes more than 140 works, spanning different media and formats—from painting and photography to installation—yet connected by recurring themes such as the relationship between vision and representation, or the tension between figuration and abstraction, as well as between culture and nature. The selection on view reflects this approach, bringing together artists from different generations and contexts without constructing an explicit curatorial narrative.
"Making a significant part of our works of art accessible to citizens is a choice that stems from the desire to share a heritage capable of telling of creativity, research and vision, values deeply linked to the identity of our country," explained Giovanni Bozzetti, president of Fondazione Fiera Milano.
While Nicolas Party’s work reflects a painterly investigation into how simple forms can evoke inner worlds through saturated colors and smooth surfaces, Untitled by Marisa Merz—a central figure in postwar Italian art and Arte Povera—reveals her later focus on the human face, combined with an intimate, process-driven approach using light, domestic materials.
A different approach emerges in Monica Bonvicini’s Valley Fire, a work made with tempera and spray print that operates on a more conceptual level, where the image is built through layers and visual interferences. In another register, Piero Gilardi introduces a reflection on the relationship between humans and nature with Betulle, reactivating a critique of contemporary consumerism through the use of industrial polyurethane foam, which here becomes a means of creating an immersive experience. Finally, sculptor Paolo Icaro is represented by Fregio, an essential work in which linear elements and painted bronze define a balance between materiality and memory, maintaining a suspended dimension between formal construction and trace.
The initiative is part of an established strategy: using miart not only as a marketplace, but also as a device for building and partially sharing the Foundation’s collection. In this sense, the temporary opening extends the role of the fair within the city, without altering the collection’s predominantly private and process-based nature.