The Italian Summer Expositions You Can't Miss

It’s the country with the highest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites (currently 51) and the largest concentration of monuments, museums and archaeological parks in the world. But that’s not all. Italy also has a very rich offering of exhibitions, which are an excellent way to supplement the classic tours of art cities. Here is a selection of what’s on show in Italy this summer.

MILAN

JOAN MIRO.
LA FORZA DELLA MATERIA

Mudec, Via Tortona 56
Tel. +39 02 54917
Until 11 September 2016
The exhibition features a large selection of works by the Catalan artist, executed over the course of 50 years between 1931 and 1981. Tied to Surrealism and interested in the connections between painting and poetry, Miro worked on the simpli cation of signs that evoke primitive art, but at the same time he ne-tuned new codes of expression. One of the most interesting sides of his work was experimentation with materials and processes that art had not explored yet. This aspect is the main focus of the Milanese exhibition, which displays works from the Fundacio Joan Miro in Barcelona and the collection belonging to the artist’s family.

ISGRO

Palazzo Reale, Piazza Duomo 12 Gallerie d’Italia, Piazza della Scala 6.

Casa del Manzoni, Via Morone 1. Info: +39 02 88445181
Until 25 September 2016

Divided among three venues that are close to each other, this free exhibition is a tribute to the artist, who is now 78. It features over 200 works spanning half a century of Italian and world culture. What launched him on the international scene were mainly the famous “erasures,” works created in the Sixties when Pop Art asserted the cult of the written word and the serial reproduction of images. Isgro responded with works in which words from the pages of books, posters and newspapers are systematically erased with a black line. Only small fragments emerge, and the same holds true for images. By attracting attention to a detail or a complete absence, Isgro launched original re ections on the power of the media and the need to reconstruct new identities.

ROME

SANTA MARIA ANTIQUA TRA ROMA E BISANZIO
Foro Romano
Info: +39 06 39967700

Finally reopened after thirty years, the basilica of Santa Maria Antiqua—discovered in 1900 in the Roman Forum, on the slopes of the Palatine—is hosting an exhibition devoted ... to itself. Mosaics, artifacts and photographs are on display in this exquisite church, which has paintings dated between the sixth and ninth centuries on the walls, allowing visitors to discover the history of this place. At the same time, the exhibition will also help them learn more about sacred Roman and Greek-Byzantine painting of the early Middle Ages, which iconoclasm has largely erased.

I MACCHIAIOLI.
LE COLLEZIONI SVELATE

Chiostro del Bramante,
Via Arco della Pace 5
Info: +39 06 916508451
Until 4 September 2016
Over 110 works represent the most important core of this nineteenth- century school. The exhibition is divided into nine sections, grouped based on their original appurtenance to the collections of various patrons. This also re- creates the setting of the art galleries that hosted them. Fattori, Signorini, Zandomeneghi, De Nittis: a long path that arrives at the early twentieth century to demonstrate that the innovations of the Macchiaioli were embraced by later artists.

NAPLES

MIMMO JODICE.
ATTESA. 1960-2016 

Museo MADRE,
Via Settembrini 79
Info: +39 081 19313016
Until 24 October 2016

This is the largest retrospective ever devoted to the Neapolitan photographer, with over 100 works in a layout specially designed for the spaces of this museum, so that the sections are extremely well connected. Jodice’s approach lies in tying together past, present and future, offering the impression of suspension in time and space. In short, it has been a long wait.