The Ramo Collection, Italian Drawing of the 20th and 21st Centuries, presents the third edition of Milano Drawing Week, a twelve-stage journey through the city dedicated to drawing, among contemporary artists and masters of the last century. For nine days, the dialogue between modern and contemporary passes through works on paper, in a series of exhibitions in museums and galleries of Milan’s urban network.
The event is in collaboration with and under the patronage of the City of Milan, Department of Culture.
From Saturday, November 25 to Sunday, December 3, 2023, Milan’s Ramo Collection presents the third edition of Milano Drawing Week, an annual event in collaboration with and under the patronage of theMilan City Council’s Department of Culture, which takes shape in a constellation of exhibitions spread throughout the Milan area. For the occasion, the Ramo Collection is making a selection of works on paper by 20th-century Italian artists available to institutions and a circuit of Milanese galleries. The invitation, addressed to one artist per space, is to identify a work from the collection and place it in dialogue with their own research. This year, in addition to the exhibitions, there will also be some side events aimed at investigating the infinite potential of this expressive medium: a party with a visual performance, a concert, a sketch mob and an educational workshop.
The Milan Drawing Week 2023 itinerary involves two civic institutions, the Castello Sforzesco and the Museum of Natural History, and ten galleries, Clima, Galleria ZERO…, Gió Marconi, kaufmann repetto, Loom Gallery, Monica De Cardenas, OPR Gallery, Renata Fabbri, Spazio Lima and Galleria Tiziana Di Caro, based in Naples but present in Milan for the sole purpose of participating in the event.
The prestigious collaboration with the Castello Sforzesco Drawings Cabinet is renewed with a focus on the prefuturist drawings of Umberto Boccioni. Participating for the first time is the Museum of Natural History, which will host an exhibition by Mad Meg (France, 1976), an artist who puts her works on paper in dialogue with a Giorgio de Chirico work from the Ramo Collection and some of the museum’s entomological specimens.
Milano Drawing Week presents the works of contemporary artists John Bock, Umberto Chiodi, Luca Gioacchino Di Bernardo, Benni Bosetto, Vadim Fishkin, Juul Kraijer, Mad Meg, Valerio Nicolai, Adrian Paci, Brandi Twilley, Serena Vestrucci, in dialogue with those of the great masters of the last century Gianfranco Baruchello, Mirella Bentivoglio, Tomaso Binga, Umberto Boccioni, Alighiero Boetti, Massimo Campigli, Alik Cavaliere, Betty Danon, Giorgio de Chirico, Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, in a path oriented to bring new light to the expressive medium of drawing.
Each work in the Branch Collection will be accompanied by a QR-code to listen to a short podcast explaining its history.
Another important new feature of this edition is the introduction of the Milan Drawing Week Prize, which will be awarded to one of the participating contemporary artists. The Prize, supported by Gruppo Censeo, consists of a cash award of €3,000 as an incentive for continuity in production on paper.
With the third edition of Milano Drawing Week, Collezione Ramo reconfirms its connection with the city, which becomes fertile ground for new reflections related to the artistic practice of drawing and becomes a crossroads of different exhibition programs and institutions.
These are the four side events aimed at investigating the infinite possibilities of this medium: Drawing Sound Movement, opening party to be held by DOPO? with animation and live drawing performances (Ian Cibic, Martina Zena) and two DJ sets (Delicatoni and Dumbo Gets Mad); Guide to the Orchestra, a concert directed by Fabio Cherstich, produced in collaboration with the Milan Symphony Orchestra, in which Ettore Tripodi’s drawings serve as the backdrop for the entire show; Sketchmob Italia, a live drawing meeting in the halls of the Museum of Natural History; and Forbidden to Know How to Draw, a workshop for children dedicated to Umberto Boccioni.
“Drawing is the earliest form of artistic expression and has always constituted one of the ways to explore the human imagination, which has remained alive and relevant despite the continuous metamorphosis of modes of expression ,” said Milan City Councilor for Culture Tommaso Sacchi. “Milano Drawing Week highlights the perennial vitality and relevance of drawing in the modern and contemporary artistic context, offering the public an opportunity to immerse themselves in Italy’s rich heritage of works on paper and to discover the wealth of archives and civic collections. The event is an opportunity to confirm how the alliance between the public and private sectors is absolutely strategic in bringing to life a cultural offer that is always new and rich in stimuli, and a tangible example of the prestige and artistic quality of the cultural initiatives proposed in the city.”
Says Irina Zucca Alessandrelli, curator of the Ramo Collection, “The great success of the past edition and the growing interest in drawing are evidenced by the new participation of the Museum of Natural History and the establishment of a prize for the best drawing, the only one of its kind in Italy, made possible thanks to the generosity of enthusiastic sponsors.”
Since the early 1900s, Collezione Ramo has closely followed the marks made on paper by the major representatives of the Italian artistic movements as well as great unknown talents. The intent is to document the wealth of this artistic practice from the last century to the contemporary,
not solely with drawings, but all works on paper (watercolours, collages, gouaches, pastels, and so on). The purpose of the collection is to present the great importance of Italian art and build a culture around drawing, with its own autonomous value, on a par with painting and sculpture.
Collezione Ramo made its first public appearance in November 2018 at Milan’s Museo del Novecento with the exhibition “Chi ha paura del disegno?” (Who’s afraid of drawing?) which, in April 2019, travelled to the Estorick Collection in London with its English title. A small exhibition entitled “La città moderna a casa Libeskind” (The Modern City at Casa Libeskind) was presented at Daniel Libeskind’s house in CityLife in April 2018, while “Ritorno al collage” (Return to Collage) opened in the Bosco Verticale attic in May 2019.
The great exhibition “Silent Revolutions: Italian Drawings from the Twentieth Century” held at the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston marked the first presentation of a private collection of modern Italian drawing in an American museum. Collezione Ramo is published in “Disegno italiano del XX secolo” (Italian Drawing of the 20th Century) by Irina Zucca Alessandrelli (Silvana Editoriale, Milan, 2018).
Collezione Ramo made its first public appearance in November 2018 at the Museo del Novecento in Milan with the exhibition “Who’s Afraid of Drawing?” which, in April 2019, traveled to the Estorick Collection in London under the title “Who’s Afraid of Drawing?” A small exhibition titled “The Modern City at Libeskind’s House” was presented at Daniel Libeskind’s home in CityLife in April 2018, while “Return to Collage” opened at the Bosco Verticale penthouse in May 2019.