Milan Cortina 2026 brought the Olympics to Italy. The Cultural Olympiad brought Depero Space to Space — The Creation of Memory to the Museo Bagatti Valsecchi in Milan. The Exhibition is still on view through August 2, and it is one of the most quietly radical things happening in the city this spring. Fortunato Depero, the Futurist painter, designer, and scenographer who designed the iconic Campari bottle and transformed bars, exhibitions, and theatre sets into total aesthetic experiences, returns to Milan for the first time in 35 years. Gianvito Rossi is the main sponsor.
The Bagatti Valsecchi brothers built their Milan residence in the late 19th century as an aesthetic manifesto, a meticulous reimagining of a 16th-century Milanese palazzo, complete with period furnishings, applied arts, and decorative coherence. Fortunato Depero did the same thing decades later in Rovereto, designing his Casa d'Arte Futurista inside a medieval stone building to house and consecrate his own work. Two men from completely different eras, both driven by the same impulse: to dissolve the line between living and art-making. Depero Space to Space puts them in the same rooms and lets the tension do the work.
Forty Works, From the 1930s to the 1950s
More than forty works from the 1930s to the 1950s, drawn from the Casa d'Arte Futurista Depero and the Mart in Trento and Rovereto. Danza del vento, 1952. Cavalli sulla corda, 1948. Cordial Campari, 1939. Simultaneità metropolitane, 1946. Depero's angular figures, vibrant textiles, and mechanical fantasies installed directly inside the neo-Renaissance rooms by Milan-based architecture firm A-Fact, which treated the museum as an active participant. Seven panels from the ViBiBar in Bolzano, the Futurist bar Depero designed in the 1930s for entrepreneur Servilio Cavazzani, closed for over forty years, reconstructed here for the first time. Sound design by Gaetano Cappa of the Barlumen Institute runs through the rooms.
Depero Space to Space — The Creation of Memory
📅 Through August 2, 2026. Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 6pm.
📍 Museo Bagatti Valsecchi, Via Gesù 5, Milan
