From 22 September to 29 December 2019, the MA * GA Museum in Gallarate hosts an exhibition that presents works from the museum's collection and from institutions such as the Angelo Bozzola Foundation of Novara, the JSA Manufacture of Busto Arsizio, Moshe Tabibnia Galleria and the Centro of Research of Textile Art of Milan, relating to the period of development and affirmation of geometric abstraction in Italy, between the thirties and sixties.

The project "A distant utopia", curated by Alessandro Castiglioni, highlights the multidisciplinary nature, utopian and capable of overcoming the boundaries of the visual arts of the concretist project, and entering into dialogue with literature, architecture and design.

The path opens with the analysis of the abstract research developed between the two wars, with particular attention to the Como and Milan area, with the works of Mario Radice and Atanasio Soldati, but also photographic interventions that document particularly significant architectures such as the Asylum Sant'Elia by Giuseppe Terragni in Como.

The second section focuses on the birth of the MAC in 1948 by Gillo Dorfles, Bruno Munari, Atanasio Soldati and Gianni Monnet. The corpus of works related to the MAC outlines a detailed panorama of great critical and documentary value of what was a historical moment of extraordinary importance for the birth of the concrete abstract pictorial language in Italy and for its connections with design and architecture. and the aesthetic re-foundation of taste.

These historical works also interact with the unpublished project by Valentina Casalini who in the last year worked on the photographic documentation of QT8, starting from a residency project promoted by the Biennial of Young Artists of the Mediterranean and by the Municipality of Milan.

The third part documents the developments of the MAC following its transformation between 1952 and 1953 and the development of abstract art in Italy until the definitive dissolution of the movement in 1958. In this context, the relationships with the nascent industrial design, furniture and object production starting from hybrid authors such as Bruno Munari and Angelo Bozzola up to designers such as Magistretti, Sambonet, Sottsass, Campi.

The itinerary ends with a focus dedicated to textile production. Some interventions by Italian abstractionists who have collaborated with Lombard industries in the production of precious textile materials used above all in the field of furniture will be considered here. This is the case of Bruno Munari with the JSA Manufacture of Busto Arsizio and of Luigi Veronesi with Elio Palmisano's Atelier d'Arte Tessile.