Milan, portraits of Maria Mulas on display at Palazzo Reale

In Milan, the rooms of theAppartamento dei Principi (Princes’ Apartment ) at Palazzo Reale will host, from November 19, 2022 to January 8, 2023, the exhibition Maria Mulas. Milan, portraits of the late 20th century, promoted by the City of Milan - Culture, produced and organized by Palazzo Reale and the Maria Mulas Archive, and curated by Andrea Tomasetig. The photographic archive contains not only reportage and research works by Maria Mulas (Manerba del Garda, 1935), but also an impressive number of portraits (over five hundred) of leading figures in the arts and culture. In the exhibition there are about one hundred of them, arrived from a long exhibition at the Slovak National Museum sponsored by the Italian Cultural Institute in Bratislava and the result of a selection that documents the photographer’s close relationship with Milan and its protagonists in the thirty years ending the 20th century.

Milan in those years is establishing itself as the capital of design, fashion, publishing, and more. It is the place around which revolves a universe of native or adopted talents, who have come from all over Italy and the world. Maria, who arrived in her early twenties back in 1956 from her native Manerba del Garda in the wake of her older brother Ugo Mulas, portrays them in the right places and at the right moments and gives them back to us with unparalleled freshness and intensity, a worthy heir to her older brother who died prematurely in 1973. The 1970s, 1980s and 1990s are a whirlwind of encounters for her, between Venetian Biennales and editions of Documenta in Kassel, exhibition layouts and openings, literary presentations, parties and reportages around the world. But the privileged place of observation is always Milan, which welcomes and integrates the various regional and foreign backgrounds, and is in those years an extraordinary laboratory of creativity and modernity that he then retransmits to Italy and the world. By making the city her epicenter, Maria Mulas showed the face of the Milanese, Italian and international artistic and cultural world.

There are hundreds and hundreds who have been portrayed by her: artists, gallery owners, critics, designers, architects, writers, editors, journalists, fashion designers, directors, actors, intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and friends. A detailed list shows as many as 539 of them, from Claudio Abbado’s “A” to Franco Zeffirelli’s “Z.” It is no wonder that the City Council dedicated a major exhibition to her in 1998, also at the Palazzo Reale, consecrating her as “the eye of Milan,” and that today it celebrates her again as the photographer who - although secluded from the gallery circuit and the art market - captured the deep, true soul of Milan, which is a city not posed, but dynamic, at work, the city of arts and professions and the most advanced entrepreneurship.

The exhibition is divided into six sections: Architecture and Design; Art; Literature and Publishing; Fashion; Performing Arts; Cosmopolitan Milan; and Mary in the World. Clearly, given the space available, there cannot be all the important names she portrayed, nor could Maria Mulas then have photographed all those we now consider important. But from her formidable archive emerges a highly representative sequence of personalities who embody much of Italian culture and made in Italy. Some names: Giorgio Armani, Gae Aulenti, Joseph Beuys, Giorgio Bocca, Roberto Calasso, Gillo Dorfles, Umberto Eco, Inge Feltrinelli, Dario Fo, Carla Fracci, Allen Ginsberg, Krizia, Vico Magistretti, Enzo Mari, Marcello Mastroianni, Ottavio Missoni, Bruno Munari, Fernanda Pivano, Gio Ponti, Miuccia Prada, Ettore Sottsass, Giorgio Strehler, Ornella Vanoni, Lea Vergine, Luigi Veronesi, Gianni Versace, Andy Warhol.

At the end of the journey one realizes that the portrait that predominates over all is that of Milan, the true protagonist of an unrepeatable season. That season from the 1970s to the 1990s, captured at its peak and in its protagonists, is behind us and Maria Mulas was its visual memory. The exhibition project is signed by Leo Guerra and Giovanni Renzi, who related the sumptuous furnished rooms to the photographs on display, also using Achille Castiglioni’s Toio series in Flos production for the light design.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by publisher Umberto Allemandi, with writings by Andrea Tomasetig, Paolo Fallai, Stefano Salis and Patrizia Zappa Mulas.

The exhibition opens Tuesday through Sunday 10 a.m.-7:30 p.m., Thursday closing at 10:30 p.m. Last admission half an hour before. Closed Mondays. Free admission. Guided tours are conducted in collaboration with Milanoguida. Its guides accompany the discovery of stories and curiosities about the author and the characters she portrayed, in a real journey through the cultural atmosphere of Milan in the second half of the 20th century. Reservations required at www.milanoguida.com

In the photo: Maria Mulas, Gae Aulenti

Milan, portraits of Maria Mulas on display at Palazzo Reale

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