Where and when
We inform you that the meeting is postponed to a later date. We are confident that we will be able to announce the new date shortly.
Gillo Dorfles in conversation with Aldo Colonetti and Luigi Sansone
In collaboration with IED
The title of the meeting is inspired by one of the last books by Gillo Dorfles, The artists I met, where an exceptional witness tells, through the activity of a militant critic, almost day after day, the “oscillations of taste”, to use still the title of a famous, always current, his writing. As if to affirm that art and life flow together, and it is not possible to separate artists from art, because the relationship with one’s time and one’s existence is the fundamental condition for giving meaning to “making art” and the aesthetic dimension.
Being open to the world, making the most of one of Dorfles’ fundamental qualities, being eclectic, that is, having one’s gaze turned everywhere, especially where it is perhaps unthinkable, to a superficial reading, an aesthetic experience and, above all, to grasp also in the marginal clues of artistic languages, experimentation and authenticity. From the end of the 20s of the last century to today, Gillo Dorfles represents an irreplaceable reference, to guide our judgments and above all to act as a “guide” in a contemporary world that is increasingly difficult to understand and interpret. The art I encountered in my life is also a travel diary, within the experiences and languages of the arts, which never forgets the person.
Gillo Dorfles
One of the most multifaceted personalities of the contemporary cultural panorama, after a fertile phase of experimentation in the artistic field, he devoted himself to studies of aesthetics and art criticism, taking an interest in the avant-garde, the relationship between art and industry and the phenomenon of taste in contemporary civilization. One of the founders of the Movement for Concrete Art (1948), at the end of the 1950s he devoted himself to studying aesthetics (teaching at the universities of Trieste, Milan and Cagliari) and practicing art criticism. His artistic production, as well as in the collective exhibitions of the MAC, has been exhibited in various personal exhibitions. His main works include Modern Architecture (1954), Symbol communication consumption (1962), New rituals, new myths (1965), Artifice and nature (1968), Il Kitsch (1968), The oscillations of taste (1970 ), Mode & Modi (1979), The daily fetish (1988); Horror pleni. The (in) civilization of noise (2008), 99 + 1 answers (2010), Irritations (2010), The artists I met (2015).
Aldo Colonetti
Philosopher, historian and theorist of art, design and architecture, since 1985 he has been director of the European Institute of Design (IED) in Milan and since 1998 he has been Scientific Director of the IED Group (Milan, Turin, Rome, Venice, Florence , Cagliari, Madrid, Barcelona, Sao Paulo). Visiting Professor at numerous Italian (Milan, Rome, Siena, Venice, Palermo) and foreign universities (Helsinki, Chicago, San Paolo, Osaka, Santiago de Chile, Madrid, Los Angeles, Pasadena – Art Center, Lugano – Academy of Architecture) , he was part of the management of the magazine “Alfabeta” and was editor of “Linea Grafica” and “Area”. In 1991 he was appointed director of “Ottagono”, an international industrial design magazine. He is a consultant, as regards design and architecture, of the Cultural Direction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since 2008 he has been a member of the Scientific Committee of the Bologna Design Center and is the cultural coordinator of Torino Design Week. Author and curator of numerous publications, he has coordinated and organized exhibitions and cultural initiatives dedicated to graphics, design and architecture, both in Italy and abroad.
Luigi Sansone
Art critic, he published the catalogs raisonné by Salvatore Scarpitta, Gillo Dorfles and Attilio Alfieri. He is curator of national and international exhibitions, including F T Marinetti = Futurism (Milan, 2009) and Gallerie Milanesi between the two wars (Milan, 2016).