Milano: The great exhibition “Gabriele Basilico. opens at Palazzo Reale and at the Triennale. My cities"

Milano: The great exhibition “Gabriele Basilico. opens at Palazzo Reale and at the Triennale. My cities."

Ten years after his passing, Milano dedication to Gabriele Basilico (1944-2013) a large exhibition divided into two exhibition venues: Royal Palace and Triennale Milano. The exhibition represents the first major homage that Milano addresses the photographer and his cosmopolitan gaze, capable of listening to the heart of all cities.
The route of approx 500 works starts from the crossing of Milano with a wide selection of images of the city and its suburbs, protagonist in the Triennale, to then broaden our gaze to the world with Basilico's great international commissions, in the exhibition a Royal Palace.

The exhibition is promoted and produced from the Municipality of Milano-Culture, Royal Palace and Triennale Milano together with Electa, and created with the scientific collaboration of the Gabriele Basilico Archive. At Palazzo Reale it is curated by Giovanna Calvenzi and Filippo Maggia; at the Triennale the curatorship is entrusted to Giovanna Calvenzi and Matteo Balduzzi.

The exhibition at the Triennale Milano
"In the years Milano it has become for me like a sea port, a private place from which to leave for other seas, for other cities, to then return and then leave again": Like this Gabriel Basil talks about the relationship with his city, which I go through 13 photographic series and hundreds of works, Of which 180 photographs a wall and a wide selection of archive images in the display case, is explored in depth at the Triennale Milano, an institution to which the photographer has always been very attached.
The exhibition presents, for the first time in an organic and complete way, the documentation work that Basilico has carried out on his city over the course of almost 40 years, describing the architecture, the building fabric, the monuments, the urban development and the transformations of Milano and its metropolitan area. More than any other city, Milano he offered Basilico lto the possibility of experimenting, to undertake research with breadth of topics, time available, ability to move.

Le 13 series exhibited, which occupy the space of Triennale Gallery in an installation conceived and created by Francesco Librizzi Studio, they retrace Basilico's career from his beginnings, inevitably immersed in the climate of social reportage, up to his last and most spectacular works, in a trajectory that describes in fragments the transformation of Milano. A journey that includes the story of the suburbs Milanese of the seventies, the famous investigation dedicated to factories (“Milano Portraits of Factories”, 1978-1980), the investigation into the architecture of Milanese modernism (1985), the project on the city at night created for the AEM (1989), the works for the construction of the neighborhood New door (from 2004 to 2012), the restoration of the roof of the Cathedral (2012). Three groups of works preserved at the museum are also on display Museum of Contemporary Photography, who contributed to the scientific curation of the exhibition at the Triennale, and who come from the projects "Space Archive” (Sesto San Giovanni, 1992-1993), "Milano without Borders" (1998) and "Next landscape” (2006-2007). There will also be two videos in the exhibition with archive materials and unpublished content.

The exhibition at the Royal Palace
Are approximately 200 works at Palazzo Reale: a rich selection from'Basil Archive among the most important works of the artist during his career, created on the occasion of international events in which he was often the only Italian author present.
In the Skylight Room there is “Sections of the Italian landscape”, a seminal investigation into the transformation of the national landscape carried out for the VI Architecture Biennial of Venice 1996, in collaboration with Stefano Boeri (96 prints 30×40 cm). The study develops along six sections of the territory, from north to south of Italy, ideally corresponding to approximately 50 km each, which combine a consolidated urban area with a densely populated suburban area. A sort of antechamber to the cities of the world which represents a fundamental step inwork of Basilico, a documentary exercise that allows the Milanese photographer to experiment with a language which we then find accomplished in the photographs of the metropolises of the world.
They will instead be exhibited in the Hall of Caryatids 100 photographs of over 40 cities made on the occasion of prestigious international assignments, including Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, Moscow, London, Paris, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Boston, Liverpool, Rome, Berlin, Lisbon, Valencia, Jerusalem, Beirut, Amman, Monte Carlo, Hong Kong and more.

The exhibition itinerary, conceived and designed by Filippo Maggia e Umberto Zanetti, with the technical sponsorship of UniFor for the installations and of Viabizzuno for the lighting system, it is conceived as an urban layout, a labyrinth of streets and squares where the spectator will encounter the photographs by Basilico set up on panels as if they were the walls of city streets.
The exhibition is accompanied by a double catalogue, published by Elect and designed by the studio Tomo Tomo, which offers a sentimental narrative made up of images, texts, encounters, memories returned from a rich anthology. A podcast produced by will also be available Three-year Milano and written and created by Gianni biondillo which will allow us to delve deeper into the figure and work of Gabriel Basil.

Biography
Gabriel Basil (Milano, 1944-2013). After degree in architecture (1973), he dedicated himself to photography. The form and identity of cities and the changes taking place in the urban landscape are his privileged areas of research. “Milano. Portraits of factories” (1978-80) is the first work dedicated to industrial suburbs. In 1984 he participated in the Mission Photographique de la DATAR, commissioned by the French government, and documents the coasts of northern France. In 1991 you work at Beirut, where he will return in 2003, 2008, 2011. He achieved lots of documentation work of cities in Italy and abroad, and a large number of exhibitions and books. Considered an undisputed master of contemporary photography, he has exhibited in many countries and received numerous awards and recognitions. He also intertwined his tireless interest in the transformations of the urban landscape with seminar activities, lessons, conferences, and written reflections. www.archiviogabrielebasilico.it.