An Italian Celebration: Contemporary Art Sale Leads Milan Design Week

A pril is design month in Milan. The city has been synonymous with fashion and design over centuries which explains why the annual Milan Design Week, celebrating the very best in Italian and international furniture, design and ideas, is the country's pre-eminent occasion for design industry, from creators established and new, to collectors from around the world, heading into the city for a colossal programme of events taking place across Milan throughout April and beyond, from the iconic Salone del Mobile furniture fair, to the citywide festival of creativity, FuoriSalone and the art fair, miart.

And at the heart of the month's activities comes a Sotheby's live auction on 20 April at the Palazzo Serbelloni. Read on for our specialist's take on the hottest works we have coming up for sale and our guide to the must-see events happening across Milan this month...

Our Highlights from the Contemporary Auction, Milan

Launch Slideshow

Our Highlights from the Contemporary Auction, Milan

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  Giorgio Morandi 'Natura Morta' (1942) Estimate: 1,000,000 - 1,500, 000 EUR

  With an impeccable provenance, this superb Natura Morta has been kept in the same private collection for five decades. 
  Like a conductor, Giorgio Morandi coordinates the objects in an orderly and skillful way, giving the canvas and its observers a peaceful show. We are carried away by Morandi’s 'ballet' of objects, into a placid and contemplative dimension, made up of well thought chords, always in dialogue with each other. 
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  Giorgio De Chirico 'Tempio in una stanza' (1926)Estimate 300,000 - 400,000 EUR

  An early work by de Chirico, Tempio in una stanza was painted in Paris in the 1920s. It is evident that the reference to the Antique is not simply a repetition or copy. In this painting the artist is more surrealist than the Surrealists.
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  Enrico Castellani 'Superficie bianca, Tokyo n. 7' (1967)Estimate 300,000 - 400,000 EUR

  Superficie bianca , dated 1967, is composed by a triangle inserted on the quadrangular shapes, which attracts all the attention while the frame structure dissolves. At th end of 1960s, Castellani’s immense repertory of strictly squared and rectangular 'surfaces' begins to be joined by new geometrics. The artist truly tests its material properties, stretching it even beyond the frame and exiting permanently from a two-dimensional structure.
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  ROMULO FIALDNI

  Alighiero Boetti 'Senza titolo' (1988)Estimate 500,000-700,000 EUR

  Boetti designed this celebrated series of arazzi in Rome but had them woven in the Middle East. In this way, their split execution was fundamentally based on the concept of twinning, entirely imbued with the notion of ordine e disordine (order and disorder), a concept at the basis of his beliefs about the harmony of the world, based on the dualism between opposing forces.
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  Lucio Fontana 'Concetto Spaziale, Attese' (1965-66)Estimate 1,200,000-1,800,000 EUR

  This work is a wonderful example of composition, executed with the artist's strongest and most sought-after colour. This balanced painting by Fontana represents the summa of his avant-garde vision. The fusion of the work's chromatic power with the preoccupation with Spatialism brings out a dichotomy between such notions as control and spontaneity, violence and passion, and, in its extension, a tension between life and death.

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Under the Milan Design Week banner are numerous events and initiatives, hundreds of design-related events and exhibitions across Milan. Chief amongst these is Salone del Mobile, the industry-standard design fair that takes place between 17 - 23 April. An event tilted towards the global design and interiors trade (although with public ticketing available on selected days), the 2023 Salone del Mobile promises 1,962 exhibitors, as well as the Salone Internazionale del Complemento d’Arredo, Workplace3.0, S.Project and SaloneSatellite annual events, as well as the very welcome return of the biennial Euroluce show with, what organisers promise, a host of new features.

Parallel to Milan Design Week is FuoriSalone, the multimedia citywide programme of events. For the 2023 edition, the theme is a rather dense agglomeration of current trends, inspired by the ‘circular economy, innovative materials, urban regeneration and artificial intelligence’ or as the organisers have shaped it, ‘Laboratorio Futuro’, ‘a place of confrontation, a concrete place where error is considered a useful element to evolve’.

Unlike the more industry-oriented Salone del Mobile, FuoriSalone is integrated into the city, bringing Milan to life with a deluge of design events, parties, exhibitions, talks and collaborations between 17 - 23 April. which will, in the organisers' words ‘analyze the present, understand the mistakes of the past and propose virtuous practices for the future’. From high-end brand collaborations and events to emerging design positions and pop-ups, this really is a carnival of ideas and exciting visual stimulation. Especially intriguing, is the FuoriSalone Award, the second edition of the prize that brings some definition and focus to the tidal wave of ideas and activity.

The FuoriSalone is organised into Design Districts around Milan, each with its own distinct curatorial concept and atmosphere. These include the Brera Design District (the heart of the ‘Future Lab’ theme and abuzz with offbeat art and design presentations), the Tortona District, the Milano Durini District, 5VIE, and Isola Design District. The latter is home to the Isola Design Festival, and takes place at over 25 sites across the area with hundreds of interventions and inventions by designers, studios and craftspeople.

Held annually each April in Milan, miart is Italy’s most expansive art fair, and promises, in this, its 27th edition, the broadest range of international exhibitors to date. The theme of this year’s fair, is ‘Crescendo’, referring to the growth in terms of quality, participation, audience year on year from editions. Practically, the fair incorporates three key sections, Established, Emergent and Decades, to span art from the early 20th century to the present day.

Alcova 2023 at the Porta Vittoria Abattoir

Curators Joseph Grima and Valentina Ciuffi launched group show 'Alcova' in 2018: every year since, the project has taken over a dilapidated building somewhere in Milan, with a selection curated by Grima and Ciuffi featuring creative interventions by brands and designers.

Capsule Plaza at Spazio Maiocchi

During Milan Design Week, Kaleidoscope magazine will be launching a special book-magazine hybrid Capsule, inspired by radical design publications and foregrounding an opulent aesthetic.

The publication coincides with the debut of the Capsule Home collection—a chair designed by Los Angeles-based design firm Nuova. For Milan Design Week, Capsule also launches a monograph dedicated to the Vibram FiveFingers, a limited-edition collaboration with Linck Ceramics.

Michelangelo Pistoletto: La Pace Preventiva (The Preventative Peace)

Running until 4 June 2023 at the Palazzo Reale Hall of the Caryatids is ‘La Pace Preventiva’, a major exhibition by Michelangelo Pistoletto. plus a site-specific installation for the evocative Sala delle Cariatidi. The works include a large new installation of corrugated cardboard arranged over the entire surface of the exhibition space, as well a career-spanning retrospective. The exhibition also takes place in partnering venues including the Museum of Natural History, the Planetarium, and the Civic Aquarium.

Yuri Ancarani - Forget Your Dream

On show until 11 June, the PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea di Milano presents the first solo show in Italy devoted to Yuri Ancarani, whose works blend documentary cinema and video art. The exhibition is a partnership with MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna.

Armani/Casa a Palazzo

During Milan Design Week 2023, Giorgio Armani is opening up the Palazzo Orsini to the public for the first time, to present the new Armani/Casa collection.

On this occasion, guests will visit the secret garden to discover a new outdoor collection and then, inside the historic building, encounter rare and precious items of furniture, displayed in the prestigious frescoed rooms on the first floor.

Many districts across the city take part in the festival, hosting a variety of fringe events. Check out the following highlights:

Brera Design District

The Brera Design District is located in central Milan, and is one of the largest in the city.

Isola Design District

The Isola Design District is located in Milan Isola neighbourhood, north of the city centre.

Tortona Design Week

Located southwest of the city centre, the Zona Tortona is home to Tortona Design Week.

Past Auction

Contemporary Auction

20 April 2023 | 6:00 PM CEST | Milan