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Palazzo Reale, Museo del Novecento and Fondazione Somaini will host three different exhibitions dedicated to the artist, from 1 July to 11 September 2022 

Photo gallery e captions of the works
 
Milan, June 30 2022 - Set up in three locations, the exhibition “Somaini e Milano”, promoted by the Municipality of Milan | Culture, Palazzo Reale, Museo del Novecento and Fondazione Somaini, retraces the work of Francesco Somaini (1926-2005) starting from his formative years and up to the last season, exploring the different areas of his multifaceted creative research and bringing to light collaboration with the protagonists of Milanese culture who were his contemporaries. The project, curated by Fulvio Irace, Luisa Somaini and Francesco Tedeschi based on a design by Enrico Crispolti, was born from the systematic study of the artist's laboratory, conducted on the occasion of the publication of the "Catalogue raisonné of sculpture" edited by Enrico Crispolti and Luisa Somaini ( Skira, Milan 2021). 
The exhibition focuses on research on sculpture at Palazzo Reale, delves into Somaini's relationships with the artists of his time at the Museo del Novecento and investigates the international profile of the sculptor in the Foundation headquarters dedicated to him. In Piazzetta Reale the installation “Development of an anthropomorphic work” (1979) serves as a great signal of the initiative. 
 
Royal Palace, Hall of Caryatids “Sculpture”, curated by Luisa Somaini and Francesco Tedeschi 

Francesco Somaini's sculpture is the protagonist in the spaces of the Sala delle Cariatidi, the Piccolo Lucernario and the Sala della Lanterna of Palazzo Reale in Milan. Seventy works on display documenting the various phases of his research from 1948 to 1992, marked by continuous innovation at a theoretical, formal and technical level: from training at the Brera Academy to updating his experiences beyond the Alps, from joining the MAC -Espace to the great informal season, from the reflection on the relationship between sculpture, architecture and urban context with the launch of different plastic typologies (sculptures/architectures and binary installations composed of a sculpted matrix and a figurative trace), up to the last season characterized by the rediscovery of the myth.  
In the Sala della Lanterna there is a focus on the gestation of the Monument to the Sailors of Italy in Milan with the exhibition of all the preparatory sketches drawn up by the artist. 
The sculptures on display come from the artist's archive, from Italian private and public collections (Collections of the Quirinale, the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome, the MART, the MA*GA Museum and the Crédit Agricole art collections Italy) and some art galleries. 
 
Museum of the Twentieth Century, Archives of the Twentieth Century “The meetings”, curated by Danka Giacon and Luisa Somaini 

Exhibited in the spaces of the Archives, on the fourth floor of the Museo del Novecento, more than one hundred works including drawings, projects, models, sculptures, paintings and photographs which document Somaini's collaboration with authors of his time. Among these Lucio Fontana, Ico Parisi and Giorgio Bassani, for the Competition for the Monument to the Resistance of Cuneo (1962-63), and the architect Luigi Caccia Dominioni with whom the sculptor began a proven partnership for about twenty years. On display are the images taken in the artist's atelier in Lomazzo by Giorgio Casali, Ugo Mulas and Enrico Cattaneo which introduce his creative laboratory, characterized above all by the use of high-pressure sand jets. Documentary material from the artist's archive, from Palazzo Morando | Costume Moda Immagine (Milan Museum collection), from the Pinacoteca Civica di Como, from the Bottoni Archive, from private collections and galleries, testifies to the complexity and circularity of Somaini's laboratory also for architecture, as demonstrated by the floor mosaics created in homes private or in public buildings. 
 
Somaini Foundation “Beyond sculpture: the city”, curated by Fulvio Irace and Luisa Somaini 
 
The exhibition presents around a hundred works including drawings, projects, models, sculptures and photomontages and documents Somaini's reflection and aspiration to shape cities with his interventions. 
Alongside the well-known metropolitan visions of New York, there are many unpublished materials that document the artist's constant attention to the cities of Lombardy (Bergamo, Como, Mantua) and Milan. A true anticipation of the use of greenery as an alternative to urban congestion are the projects for Milan and Paris, from the park for Largo Marinai d'Italia to the Parisian competition of the Parc de La Villette. Also on display are projects, photomontages and drawings of his revolutionary visions of European metropolises (Düsseldorf, Duisburg) which amaze with the radical nature of the urban planning solutions. 
The exhibition is accompanied by a rich program of meetings and tours in the city and in Lombardy, collected in an explanatory map, to discover the sculptures and mosaics in the area. On the occasion of the exhibition, the catalog “Somaini e Milano” is published by Electa, edited by Fulvio Irace, Luisa Somaini and Francesco Tedeschi. 
Esselunga and Crédit Agricole Italia supported the creation of the exhibitions.
  
Info on www.palazzorealemilano.it

Francesco Somaini was born in Lomazzo (Como) in 1926. He attended the Brera Academy from 1945 to 1947 under the guidance of Manzù. In 1949 he graduated in Law. The numerous trips made in Italy and abroad since the mid-1940s contributed to his training as a sculptor in these first years of activity. He made his debut at the Rome Quadrennial in 1948 and exhibited for the first time at the Venice Biennale in 1950, where he was also present in 1954, 1956, 1958, 1960, 1964 and 1978. In 1955 he enrolled at MAC Espace, intensifying his collaboration with architects in the name of "synthesis of the arts". In 1956 he participated in the Venice Biennale with large abstract works in ferric conglomerate, immediately noticed by international critics, and held his first solo show at the Strozzina in Florence. In the same year Léon Degand signed the text of the first monograph. In 1957 the important informal season began which would lead him to international success. In this phase he preferably casts his works in iron, lead and pewter, which he then attacks with a blowtorch and polishes the concave parts to accentuate the expressiveness of the plastic dictation. In 1959 he received the award for best foreign sculptor at the Sao Paulo Biennial in Brazil. The following year he held his first solo exhibition at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York, with a presentation by Giulio Carlo Argan, and was invited with a personal room at the Venice Biennale. In 1961 he won the first critics' prize at the Paris Biennial. In recent years he has held numerous solo exhibitions in Italy and the United States and participated in all the most important international group exhibitions. Having concluded the informal season, he loads his works with symbolic values, placing forms of violent organicity in relationship with geometric volumes of architectural layout. In the belief that sculpture has the task of redeveloping the urban fabric (which had already taken root during the large-scale experiences from the mid-sixties to the early seventies in Italy and the United States), he formalized his ideas on a utopian level in numerous design studies, published in the volume Urgenza nella città (1972), written jointly with Enrico Crispolti. He experiments with a personal working technique through the use of a high-pressure sand jet, which becomes a fundamental component of his plastic language starting from 1965. Since 1975 he has studied a new plastic typology, making bas-relief traces with the rolling of an abstract matrix that leaves an imprint in which an image is revealed. In the same year he began using marble. He presents the matrices, traces and photomontages of fantastic urban visions in the room at the Venice Biennale (1978) and in the solo exhibition at the Wilhelm-Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg (1979).
He died in Como in 2005. The National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome dedicated the first posthumous retrospective to him in 2007.