Milan's Palazzo Reale devotes a major retrospective to Ugo Mulas, with many images never before exhibited

From October 10, 2024 to February 2, 2025, Palazzo Reale in Milan will host Ugo Mulas. The Photographic Operation, intended to be one of the largest and most detailed retrospectives ever devoted to the photographer (Pozzolengo, 1928 - Milan, 1973). Curated by Denis Curti, director of Le Stanze della Fotografia in Venice, and Alberto Salvadori, director of the Ugo Mulas Archive, promoted by the Municipality of Milan-Cultura and produced by Palazzo Reale and Marsilio Arte, in collaboration with theUgo Mulas Archive and with the support of the Deloitte Foundation and Deloitte Italia, the exhibition will offer an in-depth and comprehensive view of Mulas’s work, paying tribute to his extraordinary contribution to photography.

The exhibition features more than 250 images, including many never before exhibited, vintage shots, documents, books and films, which together trace the entire career of Ugo Mulas. The works on display range from theater and fashion photographs to portraits of international American Pop art artists, intellectuals, architects and cultural figures such as Dino Buzzati, Giorgio De Chirico, Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Arthur Miller, Eugenio Montale, Louise Nevelson, Gio Ponti, Salvatore Quasimodo, Giorgio Strehler, Andy Warhol and many others. The exhibition is structured in thematic chapters that illustrate the versatility and depth of Mulas’ work, highlighting how photography is for him a means of witnessing and critically interpreting reality.

The exhibition will focus in particular on the photographer’s connection with Milan. Since his first shots in 1953, depicting the Brera district and the famous Jamaica bar, Mulas has documented the city’s cultural and social life with sensitivity and acumen. Photographs of the suburbs, the central station and moments of everyday life offer a vivid and detailed portrait of Milan’s economic and social fervor in the second half of the 20th century.

In this retrospective, Milan becomes not only the backdrop but also the protagonist of Mulas’ photographs, which through his lens captures the essence of the ever-changing city. The exhibition highlights Mulas’ ability to transform each shot into an element of a larger and more conscious narrative, a true “photographic operation” that goes beyond the simple recording of a moment.

In this perspective, the exhibition presents many unpublished images of Milan through portraits of intellectuals, architecture, theaters, empty spaces, all forming a single plot, in which, as the author himself declares, he found himself increasingly thinking and working. For the first time, an entire section will be presented focusing on some of the most important protagonists of design and architecture in the Milanese context, such as, for example, Gae Aulenti, Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, Vittorio Gregotti and Gio Ponti; alongside several images of the artist Fausto Melotti, a sculptor and a close friend of Ugo Mulas.

The close relationship between Ugo Mulas and the Milanese environment, which constitutes the fil rouge of the exhibition at Palazzo Reale, is translated and expanded in the widespread initiative Ugo Mulas in the City, born from the collaboration of Marsilio Arte and the city of Milan aimed at recounting and celebrating Mulas’ work through the exhibition of his works in the places, museums and institutions that most influenced his life as an artist. The Pinacoteca di Brera, the Museo del Novecento, the Museo Poldi Pezzoli, and the Fondazione Marconi will host a selection of Ugo Mulas’ photographs, offering an intellectual itinerary that traces and unites the places fundamental to the photographer’s artistic research, interweaving his life and works, and inviting visitors to continue the journey outside the exhibition. Along with these places, Deloitte Gallery, as a sponsor of the exhibition, will also host some of the author’s shots. Thanks to the network and synergy between these realities, some of which are so connected to the history of Ugo Mulas - just think of the portrait of Joan Mirò taken next to Pollaiolo’s famous portrait of a lady, in a room of the Poldi Pezzoli in 1963; or the portraits of artists whose works are exhibited at the Museo del Novecento; or even the photographs of Brera and its neighborhood - it will be possible to immerse oneself within a great polyphonic tale, which weaves Mulas’ biographical and artistic journey with the historical and cultural context of Milan.

The subtitle of the exhibition, The Photographic Operation, draws inspiration from one of the most important works created by Mulas, Verifiche (1968-1972): fourteen images born from the author’s conceptual reflection on the history of photography and its constituent elements. For the first time, at Palazzo Reale, the studies preceding the series will also be exhibited together with the Verifiche, forming a true testament that still provides us with the keys to enter the aesthetic and conceptual universe of Ugo Mulas. A sort of reconnaissance of photography, which has as its starting point a tribute to Niépce, Verification to which the exhibition will devote special attention.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalog published by Marsilio Arte with essays by curators Denis Curti and Alberto Salvadori.

Ugo Mulas. The photographic operation is the result of a project to popularize the work of the great photographer and had its first stop in Venice, within the Le Stanze della fotografia center, in 2023. The program continues in the fall of 2024 in Milan, where the exhibition is presented with a completely new path and approach designed specifically for the city, thanks to the intense research work within the author’s production, which has made it possible to find shots that have never been exhibited until now.

Hours: Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Thursday until 10:30 p.m. Closed Mondays.

Image: Ugo Mulas, Joan Mirò, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan, 1963 © Eredi Ugo Mulas. All rights reserved.
Courtesy Archivio Ugo Mulas, Milan - Galleria Lia Rumma, Milan / Naples.

Milan's Palazzo Reale devotes a major retrospective to Ugo Mulas, with many images never before exhibited

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