Italian art and design in the 20th Century seen through 450 of the most representative works from furniture to glass to textiles and ceramics, as well as paintings, sculpture, photography, and architectural drawings. For Italian design, the twentieth century represents a remarkable story of achievement. The history of Italian design abounds with discussion on its cultural and artistic dimension, yet there has been no study of the synergy between experimentation in art and innovative design in Italy's industrial development during the twentieth century. The exhibition catalogue is a groundbreaking investigation of these links, and it explores the diverse and complex ways of seeing, interpreting and representing industrial society in Italy through the eyes of the architects, artists and designers who worked through the century. This catalogue, published in association with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, presents around 450 of the most representative works of twentieth-century art and design. It is structured around 5 themes - Boundless Optimism, Violence, Monumentality, Functionalism, Thee Economic Miracle, Contesting Prosperity, Post-Modern Testing Ground - which define the different periods of philosophical, economic and aesthetic discourse which shaped the recent history of Italian art and design.

Author Biography

Guy Cogeval is Director of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. He is the co-editor of Edouard Vuillard. Critical Catalogue of Paintings and Pastels (Skira/Wildenstein Institute, 2003). Giampiero Bosoni is Professor of Interior Architecture and History of Design at the Politecnico of Milan. He is a contributor to architecture and design journals such as Domus, Abitare and Interni.