Les Monstres Amis: Emilio Scanavino and the 10th Triennale in Milan, Italy
On the occasion of Miart and Milan Design Week 2025, the Emilio Scanavino Foundation, in its new Milan headquarters, inaugurates its exhibition program with a show that looks to the past to understand the present: Les Monstres Amis. Emilio Scanavino and the 10th Triennale, on view from April 4th to June 22nd, 2025.
LEFT: Exhibition Views: Les Monstres Amis. Emilio Scanavino e la X Triennale. Photo by Bruno Bani; RIGHT: Exhibition Views: Les Monstres Amis. Emilio Scanavino e la X Triennale. Photo by Bruno Bani
Emilio Scanavino: A Central Voice in Postwar Art
One of the most significant artists of the Italian postwar period, Emilio Scanavino (Genoa, 1922 – Milan, 1986) navigated the most vibrant seasons of European art with both coherence and unease, moving fluidly between painting, sculpture, and ceramics. His work, characterized by a powerful graphic sign and a constant tension between order and chaos, matter and symbol, is recognizable for its dense network of lines evoking knots, nets, and inner weavings. Starting in the 1950s, Scanavino gravitated toward Art Informel, developing an autonomous visual language that reflected the torment of existence and a desire to explore its depths. Ceramics—especially explored in Albisola—became for him a radical field of experimentation, where hand-shaped material was charged with gesture, wounds, and tension: a three-dimensional extension of his painting, and a space open to dialogue with other artists and the cultural industry of his time.
LEFT: Emilio Scanavino, Vase, 1953, polychrome majolica, high-temperature firing, h. 88 x Ø 58 cm; RIGHT: Emilio Scanavino, Plate, 1954, slip-coated terracotta with glazes and oxides, ø 42 cm. Museo della Ceramica di Savona, Fondazione De Mari Collection. Photo credit: Claudio Pagnacco
Curated by Michel Gauthier and Marco Scotini, this exhibition marks the launch of the Foundation’s program by revisiting a key event in 20th-century Italian history: the 10th Triennale di Milano of 1954, a true crossroads of ideas between art, design, and industry. Within that revolutionary context, Scanavino emerged as a leading figure in a movement that sought to transcend the boundaries imposed by dominant functionalism, opening up new expressive possibilities and anticipating the theoretical developments that would shape artistic movements in the years to come.
The Ceramic Laboratory and the Challenge to Functionalism
At the heart of the exhibition is the historic ceramics room of the Triennale, reconstructed within the Milanese venue in a scenography that evokes the original 1954 setup designed by Joe Colombo. Here, works created in Albisola during the summer of 1954 by artists such as Lucio Fontana, Enrico Baj, Asger Jorn, Roberto Matta, Sergio Dangelo, Corneille, and Scanavino himself return to dialogue in an installation that captures the rebellious and experimental spirit of the time.
LEFT: Exhibition Views: Les Monstres Amis. Emilio Scanavino e la X Triennale. Photo by Bruno Bani; RIGHT: Exhibition Views: Les Monstres Amis. Emilio Scanavino e la X Triennal. Photo by Bruno Bani
Ceramics, a material as popular as it was underrated, became for these artists a privileged language to challenge the rigidity of industrial design and to restore focus on the image, deformation, material, and the body. In Scanavino's hands, ceramics became fertile ground for a poetics that would soon explode in his painting and sculpture, increasingly gestural and physical.
Toward an Imaginist Bauhaus
Les Monstres Amis also offers a critical reading of a pivotal moment in both Italian and international cultural history. The ceramics section of the 1954 Triennale represented a true break from the rhetoric of functional form—an act that anticipated the emergence of the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, the precursor to the Situationist International.
LEFT: Enrico Ciuti, Marco Del Corno, Vintage Poster for the 10th Triennale di Milano, 1954, lithograph; RIGHT: Emilio Scanavino, Sculpture, 1954, slip-coated and incised terracotta, 24 x 7 x 6 cm
That Triennale was therefore more than just an exhibition: it was a "laboratory of utopias", a place where art and life began to merge, giving voice to a restless generation in search of new ways to express the world.
A New Space to Rediscover Scanavino
With this inaugural exhibition, the Emilio Scanavino Foundation positions itself as a new point of reference for the study and appreciation of the Genoese artist’s work, aiming to restore its complexity and international scope. The exhibition catalogue, published by Dario Cimorelli Editore, features essays by the curators along with contributions by Luca Bochicchio, Lisa Hockemeyer, and Stefano Setti, offering valuable insights into the historical and theoretical context in which Scanavino operated.
LEFT: Exhibition Views: Les Monstres Amis. Emilio Scanavino e la X Triennale. Photo by Bruno Bani; RIGHT: Exhibition Views: Les Monstres Amis. Emilio Scanavino e la X Triennale. Photo by Bruno Bani
In the vibrant heart of Milan, amidst fairs and design, historical and contemporary art, Les Monstres Amis invites the public to revisit the past with new eyes, discovering how Emilio Scanavino was able to transform matter into thought, and ceramics into a poetic gesture.
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