ICA Milano presents , from Friday 13 December 2019 to Sunday 2 February 2020, in conjunction with the solo show by Simone Forti, a new episode of Gallery Focus, a documentary journey in chapters of the history of Italian galleries that more than others, from the 1950s to today , have helped to define the identity of contemporary art in our country. Through a selection of archive materials , works and stories of experiences, Gallery Focus returns a faithful recognition of the atmospheres that have affected the artistic environments at the time of the reconstruction, first, and then the economic boom, and who have contributed through a multidisciplinary and innovative exchange to a real update of the Italian visual culture.

The second edition of this meta-institutional journey is the story - conducted through documents (photographs, books, magazines, invitations, posters, illustrative cards, writings) but also in the light of a wide selection of works - of the experience of Multipli, a gallery opened in Turin in 1970 by Giorgio Persano. With this name, the gallery gave life between 1970 and 1975 to an important work on the idea of 'multiple', seen as the engine for a new expressive research. To develop it, the gallery worked only with the artists of Arte Povera and with some Italian artists of the Conceptual area, distinguishing itself for its experimental approach.

The Arte Povera and "Multipli" exhibition, Turin 1970-1975 - curated by Elena Re, art critic and independent curator, who is credited with having contributed to the international enhancement of Luigi Ghirri's work - aims to emerge the uniqueness of the work of Multipli during this five-year period. The exhibition project, presented in Berlin at the Sprüth Magers gallery in 2014, is now on show at ICA Milan with an updated curatorial look.

Multipli has embraced that sense of possibility that is at the basis of Arte Povera as it was described, a few years before the opening of the gallery, by Germano Celant in "Flash Art" (November-December 1967), which proposed the idea of an art based on the free planning of man: “A new attitude to regain a 'real' domain of our being”.

An innovative attitude that has not only affected the artists, but also the context of the galleries and more generally the relationship between art and life.