Museo del Novecento

General information

Destination	Category
Milan, Italy	Attractions/Entertainment

Program details

Go back to the future with this fascinating guided tour of the Museo del Novecento, a gallery housing some of the greatest artworks from the futurist movement and other 20th century genres. Located in the magnificent Arengario Palace, the museum boasts works by celebrated artists such as the Italians Modigliani and Morandi, and of international painters such as Picasso, Kandinsky, Braque, Mondrian and Klee.

The movement known as futurism originated in Italy in the years before World War I and it advocated a radical break with the past, hence the name. Its founder, the poet Filippo Marinetti, claimed that ‘art can be nothing but violence, cruelty and injustice’, and there can be no doubt that many of the defining futurist images convey power and aggression. Marinetti later became a strong advocate of fascism so it is fitting that the museum is housed in a civic palace that is itself a landmark of fascist architecture.

Museo del Novecento, which means Museum of the Twentieth Century, has almost 20 dedicated sections featuring works from international vanguard artists like Picasso to the Marino Marini classical-inspired sculpture collection and the Arte Povera movement, which thrived in Italy in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But the star attraction is The Fourth Estate, a large oil celebrating the working classes by tragic artist Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo. This powerful image shows the toiling masses as almost one homogenous block marching forward during a strike though the painting predates the futurist movement by a decade.

Meeting/pick-up Via Marconi 1, Piazza Duomo. Duration: Two hours.
Start/opening time: 10.30am on Saturday.
Languages: English.