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The interior design panorama is experiencing a return to the refined aesthetics of European apartments from the early 20th century. Highly sought after in the real estate market, these spaces are characterized by a harmonious combination of white walls and herringbone parquet floors, decorated ceilings, moldings and doors embellished with colored glass, which divide the rooms evoking a timeless elegance. The combination of a simple and a little austere white background, embellished with a few highly effective details, transforms the interior into a "domestic white cube": the walls are the neutral canvas on which to play with art, photography and design, combining works of different sizes and using all the available space.
To revive the fascination for this type of dimension is a visit to the house-museum Casa Museo Boschi di Stefano, a cultural and artistic jewel located in the heart of Milan, an opportunity that immersed us in an atmosphere of the past, today more than ever reinterpretable in a contemporary key. What is striking is the cluster of paintings on the entire space of the walls of the apartment: artistic masterpieces of the 20th century presented in an intimate and informal way, building up a narration that transforms the walls into stories speaking of taste, of the personality and passions of those who lived in these rooms: the large apartment, located at 15 Via Giorgio Jan, belonged to the Pirelli engineer Antonio Boschi (1896-1988) and the ceramist and sculptor Marieda Di Stefano (1901-1968), who were both great art connoisseurs and passionate collectors.
In the residence, which opened its doors to the public in 2003, one can admire 300 of the over 2000 works from the collection, donated by Antonio to the Municipality of Milan in 1974, after Marieda's death, and largely exhibited at the Museo del Novecento in Milan. The works, among which a series of masterpieces by Giorgio De Chirico, Mario Sironi and Lucio Fontana and Filippo De Pisis stand out, are displayed in the rooms in chronological order, flanked by an extraordinary selection of absolutely unique furnishings and objects.
It is here that you'll discover a 30s dining room with table and chairs inspired by Art Déco volumes, a project created ad hoc by the painter Mario Sironi. Illuminating this "set" is a crystal and brass chandelier with an extremely modern line, which upon closer inspection turns out to have been created by Pietro Chiesa in 1935 for Fontana Arte. In another wing of the house, the dialogue is established between the Agena chandelier by Alessandro Mendini (a piece created by Venini in 1993) and the fun and colorful 50s furnishings designed by Gino Levi Montalcini. Walking through the rooms, it is not difficult to imagine that this residence was an important crossroads of the artistic and intellectual scene of the time between the wars, hosting discussions and exchanges of ideas accompanied by the notes poured out by a Bechstein grand piano from 1913, which triumphs in one of the main halls.
Each installation, curated by the Boschi Di Stefano Foundation (established in 1998), is framed by the continuous succession of pictorial masterpieces on the walls, featuring different sizes and shades. A fusion between universes that reveals how art and design can dialogue in space, reflecting not only a significant slice of history, in this case of the city of Milan, but offering a unique perspective on the life of a couple passionate about collecting... and beauty. It is no coincidence that the shell of the house is a 30s building designed by the architect Piero Portaluppi, whose signature is also indelibly imprinted in numerous internal details of the residence, including the elegant geometric decorations of the glass doors: Antonio and Marieda, who had five children, commissioned the entire building to the architect in 1929. On the ground floor, Marieda created her ceramic workshop, which in the 50s became an actual ceramic school, and whose activity continued until 2011.
