Ugo Mulas and Milan: a photographic journey in the city

The exhibition “Ugo Mulas. The photographic operation” opens today – 10 October 2024. Promoted by the Municipality of Milan and produced by Palazzo Reale and Marsilio Arte in collaboration with the Ugo Mulas Archive, with the support of the Deloitte Foundation and Deloitte Italia, the exhibition (on stage at Royal Palace until February 2, 2025) offers a comprehensive reinterpretation of the work of the great photographer, born in 1928 and died in 1973. Over 300 images, many of which have never been exhibited before, precious vintage shots, documents, books and films, retrace the entire production of Ugo Mulas: from theater to fashion, from portraits of international artists, protagonists of American Pop art, to intellectuals, architects, and figures from the world of culture and entertainment - such as Dino Buzzati, Giorgio De Chirico, Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Arthur Miller, Eugenio Montale, Louise Nevelson, Gio Ponti, Salvatore Quasimodo, Giorgio Strehler, Andy Warhol and many others - from cities to nudes and jewels. Along the path, divided into thematic chapters, the profile of a photographer who has tackled many different subjects during his brief and intense experience emerges, with the awareness that photography is not mere documentation, but testimony and critical interpretation of reality.

The review, edited by Denis Curti, director of “Le Stanze della Fotografia” in Venice, and Alberto Salvadori, director of the Ugo Mulas Archive, proposes an original approach, which finds its main narrative core in the city of Milan.

“With this retrospective – says the Councillor for Culture Tommaso Sacchi – Milan pays homage not only to a great photographer, but also to a man who was able to capture and transmit the soul of this city in continuous evolution. Ugo Mulas, in fact, will be permanently exhibited in the new itinerary of the Museo del Novecento, which we will inaugurate in the next few days, precisely for his interpretation of the artistic life of the city in fundamental years for Milan: those of the Bar Jamaica, of Piero Manzoni and Luciano Bianciardi, of Lucio Fontana and of the Funerals of Nouveau Réalisme. But not only that: other museums in the city will also host a selection of photographs by Mulas, proposing an itinerary that will touch the fundamental places of his life and his works, thus continuing the itinerary outside the halls of Palazzo Reale”.

Ugo Mulas and Milan

“Working on the relationship between the structure of the city and things and people, I thought of a work that I have long wanted to do: it is a work on the city where I live, on Milan (…). My idea is not that of a book, but of an archive, a photographic archive of the city of Milan.

Ugo Mulas's relationship with Milan is profound, as his very first shots from 1953 of the Brera district and the famous Jamaica bar, a meeting place for extraordinary personalities of art and culture of the time, or the photographs of the suburbs, the Central Station, the dormitories and everyday moments, testify. His visual documentation today represents a precious contribution to the understanding of the cultural and artistic history of that era, which tells the story of the economic and social fervor of Milan in the second half of the twentieth century.

In this sort of osmosis with the city, Ugo Mulas's production testifies to his ability to read the world through the camera. Milan, in this sense, offers itself as an excellent theater to welcome a deep awareness of the creative act, which, to use the author's words, never corresponds to a simple recording, but rather to an "authentic cognitive operation". No shot aims to capture an exceptional moment or a rare event, but rather constitutes the piece of a broad literary composition, of a conscious narration, of a true "photographic operation".

In this perspective, the exhibition presents many unpublished images of Milan through portraits of intellectuals, architecture, theaters, empty spaces, all forming a single plot, in which, as the author himself declares, he found himself increasingly thinking and working. For the first time, an entire section is presented dedicated to some of the most important protagonists of design and architecture in the Milanese context, such as Gae Aulenti, Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, Vittorio Gregotti and Gio Ponti; alongside several images of the artist Fausto Melotti, sculptor, affectionate friend of Ugo Mulas.

The close relationship between Ugo Mulas and the Milanese environment, which is the common thread of the exhibition at Palazzo Reale, is translated and expanded with the widespread initiative 'Ugo Mulas in the city', born from the collaboration between Marsilio Arte and the city of Milan with the aim of telling and celebrating Mulas's work through the exhibition of his works in the places, museums and institutions that have most influenced his life as an artist. The Pinacoteca di Brera, the Museo del Novecento, the Museo Poldi Pezzoli and the Fondazione Marconi will host a selection of photographs by Ugo Mulas, proposing an intellectual itinerary that retraces and unites the places that are fundamental to the photographer's artistic research, intertwining his life and works.

Thanks to the network and synergy between these realities, some of which are so closely linked to the story of Ugo Mulas – just think of the portrait of Joan Mirò taken next to the famous portrait of a lady by Pollaiolo, in a room of the Poldi Pezzoli in 1963; or the portraits of artists whose works are exhibited at the Museo del Novecento; or even the photographs of Brera and its neighborhood – it will be possible to delve into a great polyphonic story, which interweaves the biographical and artistic path of Mulas with the historical and cultural context of Milan.

The subtitle of the exhibition, “The photographic operation”, draws inspiration from one of the most important works created by Mulas, the Verifiche (1968-1972), fourteen images born from the author's rigorous conceptual reflection on the history of photography and its constituent elements.

For the first time, in the setting of Royal Palace, together with the Verifications, the studies that precede the series will also be exhibited, forming a true testament that still today provides us with the keys to understanding the aesthetic and conceptual universe of Ugo Mulas. A sort of reconnaissance of photography, which has as its starting point a tribute to Niépce, Verifica to whom the exhibition will dedicate particular attention.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Marsilio Arte with essays by curators Denis Curti and Alberto Salvadori.