To coincide with the opening of the FIAC 2019, the architect Charles Zana and Tornabuoni Art will inaugurate ‘Utopia’, an exhibition that creates connections between post-war Italian art and design, from 17 October to 21 December.

This exhibition, designed and conceived by the architect Charles Zana in collaboration with Tornabuoni Art, is based on the idea of dialogue, like previous exhibitions designed by the architect. This dialogue unfolds room by room in the show, whose name is inspired by the ‘Utopia’ lamp created by the architect Nanda Vigo in 1970. This iconic lamp - shaped like a frame - transforms the empty space at its heart into a picture made of light.

“In ‘Utopia’ I want to show how the different Italian avant-garde movements disrupted the history of art and design in the 20th century,” says Zana. “This incredible creative effervescence of artists and architects in the aftermath of World War II gave birth to visionary forms that had never been seen before and I dreamed of this as utopia.” Through around forty pairings of works of art and design, where furniture, painting and sculpture will be in dialogue, ‘Utopia’ offers an original exploration of the relationships between the greatest Italian artists and architects from the 1950s to the 1970s to reveal the common aspirations and experimental spirit of this visionary generation who sought to reimagine Italy in the decades following the War.

Zana will transform Tornabuoni Art’s historic Paris townhouse into a series of intimate salons that create art and design “couples”. His mise-en-scene creates imaginary scenarios, asking questions such as ‘What if Giorgio De Chirico and Ettore Sottsass spoke the same metaphysical language? Did Lucio Fontana and Carlo Mollino share a similar quest for the absolute?’

‘Utopia’ brings to light for the first time the links between many artists and designers: Gino Sarfatti and Paolo Scheggi, Carlo Scarpa and Dadamaino, Enrico Castellani and Nanda Vigo, Michele de Lucchi and Alberto Burri, to name a few. Mario Ceroli will have a room dedicated to its art, at the frontier at the two disciplines.

Whether they are linked by a similar vision of time, a concern for the role of man in nature and space, or a shared poetic vocabulary that connects the profane and the sacred, these pairs of Italian architects and artists in this exhibition will reveal their extraordinary ability to disrupt the boundaries between art and design.

‘Utopia’ is accompanied by an original publication with essays by Charles Zana and by the art historian Dr. Flavia Frigeri.