TRUSSARDI CELEBRATES THE REALITIES OF MATERNITY IN ‘LE GRANDE MADRE’

The Nicola Trussardi Foundation has become famous for using the city of Milan as its own roving art-space.

For example in June 2015 Trussardi staged the most original fashion presentation of the season at the library of Milan’s Pinacoteca di Brera that featured a handsome cast of young dancers and acting graduates performing improvisations and staged monologues on morals, and the powers of good and evil, which they recited from the works of Voltaire, Pirandello, Kant and Baudelaire.

“Because fashion is also culture, not just product,” Trussardi explained, adding: “We always talk about lifestyle, but I actually wanted to give the experience of one, and not just an image.”

These types of displays have become typical since Massimiliano Gioni came on board in 2002. Trussardi’s most recent exhibition, ‘La Grande Madre’, which opened this week takes place across 29 rooms spread throughout the Palazzo Reale, one of the Milan’s most historical institutions.

The decision to colonise a classical art space was, to a certain degree, mandated by the scale and provenance of the art itself. ‘The exhibit is enormous,’ remarks Beatrice Trussardi, president of the foundation and daughter of the eponymous Nicola, who works closely with Gioni on each annual exhibit, including the recent wheatfield conceived by Agnes Denes and planted in the city’s Porta Nuova district. ‘Plus, we have so many very important works that have been loaned by institutions and collectors that required heavily monitored conditions and security.’

The exhibition, which deals exclusively with the theme of motherhood, features over 400 works by 139 international, occidental artists made between 1900 and the present, including Diane Arbus, Louise Bourgeois, Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp and Jeff Koons. Three quarters of the artists are female and the topic of maternity is not just celebrated, but more often deconstructed, analysed and laid bare in its often unglamorous – sometimes horrifying – reality, for all the world to see.