The Bagatti Valsecchi Museum in Milan, in collaboration with Mart - Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, presents the exhibition Depero Space to Space. The Creation of Memory, scheduled from Feb. 13 to Aug. 2, 2026. Curated by Nicoletta Boschiero and Antonio D’Amico, the exhibition is part of the schedule of theMilan Cortina 2026 Cultural Olympiad and enjoys the patronage of Enit, the Lombardy Region, the Autonomous Province of Trento, the City of Milan and the City of Rovereto.
The exhibition project was created with the intention of highlighting a remarkable parallelism that, although in different eras, unites Barons Fausto and Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi and Fortunato Depero: the shared desire to inhabit and create spaces suspended between the ancient and the contemporary. The exhibition marks Depero’s return to Milan thirty-five years after the last retrospective dedicated to him and proposes an unprecedented path in which the artist’s works dialogue with the permanent collection of the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum. Depero’s works thus become the guests of an original installation, specially designed by the Milan-based architecture firm A-Fact, conceived to enhance the space-time relationship of the works within a living context with a strong historical identity. With more than forty works created between the 1930s and 1950s from the Casa d’Arte Futurista Depero and the Mart in Trento and Rovereto, the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum further strengthens its vocation as a “House of Collections.”
The museum house, created in the late 19th century by the Bagatti Valsecchi brothers and set up as a late Renaissance mansion enriched with paintings and artifacts of applied art, ideally dialogues with the Casa d’Arte Futurista dedicated to Depero in the 1950s. In both cases, the place becomes an integral part of the work, an expression of the same tension toward unity between space, identity and artistic creation. Just as the Bagatti Valsecchi brothers adhered to the neo-Renaissance style proposed by the Savoy monarchy without renouncing the technological innovations of their time, in the same way Depero knew how to place modern works inside an ancient building, achieving a result of absolute originality.
The shared ability to relate distant eras and the contemporary constitutes the conceptual foundation on which Depero Space to Space is developed . The creation of memory. The project is supported by Maison Gianvito Rossi, main sponsor of the exhibition, and by Altemasi Trentodoc, Art Parfum, Christopher, IUAD - Institute of Universal Art and Design, Larusmiani, Nautica Casarola and Unimatic. Thanks to the contribution of these realities, the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum becomes the scene of an ideal confrontation in which Casa Depero and Casa Bagatti Valsecchi are reflected in each other.
The exhibition itinerary intends to pay tribute to the extraordinary versatility of Fortunato Depero, an artist but also a designer, interior decorator and set designer, who has always been interested in the layout of spaces. As early as the 1920s, in fact, Depero was responsible for the applied arts exhibitions in Monza in 1923 and 1927 and the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris in 1925.
The exhibition is also an opportunity to recount the central relationship between Depero and Milan, the artist’s city of choice. Here, in 1946, he presented a solo exhibition at Galleria Il Camino, supported by his collector friend Gianni Mattioli; also in Milan took place, in 1962, his posthumous critical reappraisal with a retrospective curated by Guido Ballo, followed by the exhibition at Villa Reale in 1989. Today Depero ideally returns to the city, at the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum, to continue his eclectic and forward-looking dream.
The exhibition is proposed as an experience to be lived inside the rooms of the museum, enriched by the soundtrack of some rooms curated by Gaetano Cappa of the Barlumen Institute. The itinerary concludes with a re-enactment of the ViBiBar, the famous Vino-Birra Bar for which Depero created in 1937 a decoration with seven cloth inlays inserted in a boiserie for Cantine Cavazzani in Bolzano. The Bagatti Valsecchi Museum reproposes this experience through the appointments of ViBiBar Depero. L’aperitivo futurista al Museo Bagatti Valsecchi: five evenings, from February to July, that transform the museum into an elegant futurist bar, amid soft lighting, live jazz music and atmospheres of yesteryear. Tours of the exhibition, led by director and curator Antonio D’Amico, are accompanied by an aperitif offered by Altemasi Trentodoc, Melchiori, Lacerba and the Azienda per il Turismo Val di Non, designed as a tribute to Depero’s creative spirit and futurist conviviality.
Accompanying the exhibition is a catalog published by Silvana Editoriale, with essays by Nicoletta Boschiero, Antonio D’Amico, Sara Fontana, Aurora Ghezzi, Francesca Velardita and Federico Zanoner. The exhibition also benefits from the collaboration of partners such as Urban Vision and Radio Classica, the event’s official radio station.
Hours: Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays.
ViBiBar Depero. The Futurist aperitif at the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum
Feb. 13 | March 26 | April 16 | May 7 | July 2
Two shifts at 6 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.
Information and reservations.
€20 full; €15 reduced for Friends of the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum.
Tickets available at vivaticket.com
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| Bagatti Valsecchi and Depero: the shared desire to inhabit spaces suspended between ancient and contemporary in an exhibition |
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