The exhibition delves into the pivotal role Turin played in shaping Art Nouveau, also known as the stile Liberty or “Liberty style” in Italy. It takes place at Palazzo Madama – Museo Civico d’Arte Antica di Torino and is a collaboration between Palazzo Madama and SIAT – Società degli Ingegneri e degli Architetti in Torino, in partnership with MondoMostre.

Featuring approximately 100 works, the exhibition traces the transformative influence of this “new art” on Turin’s life and society, establishing an architectural and artistic legacy that resonated globally. This event holds strategic significance for Turin’s inclusion in the RANN in Brussels and its UNESCO World Heritage Site candidacy, highlighting its Liberty style heritage.

Divided into five sections, the exhibition starts with a focus on the powerful depiction of women during the shift from the 19th to the 20th century. It then immerses visitors in the modern home’s domestic sphere, showcasing the innovative architectural elements synonymous with Turin’s Liberty style. The journey continues through the city streets, exploring how the Liberty style shaped diverse buildings, with a central spotlight on “La Grande Via.”

The fourth section, “New Languages for a New Society,” explores the flourishing interior design industry, illustrating the Liberty style’s unifying artistic language. The final room, “From the Sphinx to Mexico City,” centers on Leonardo Bistolfi, offering insight into the artistic creation process and displaying some of his masterpieces.

The exhibition design provides a comprehensive understanding of Liberty style manifestations, unraveling the intricacies of architectural and aesthetic creation. It allows visitors to grasp the production process across various art forms, including architecture, interior design, painting, sculpture, graphic design, and more.

The Belle Époque period, marked by 40 years of unbridled faith in progress, saw the birth of Art Nouveau as a global movement, with Turin as its capital. Turin’s Liberty style experiments, reflected in over 500 masterpieces across the city, had a profound impact on Western architecture.

The exhibition at Palazzo Madama offers a panorama of this transformative period, emphasizing the metamorphosis from naturalism to decorative symbolism. The staging, exhibition, and catalogue, published by Silvana Editoriale, are orchestrated by a dedicated team committed to exploring Turin’s Liberty style.

Accompanied by the Libertyamo program of related events, the exhibition aims to engage the city and its citizens in rediscovering their roots and the architectural treasures surrounding them in everyday life.

For ticket information, please visit the official exhibition website or contact the venue directly by CLICKING HERE.

If you visit Turin, you can book an art nouveau private tour specialised in art nouveau with our great guides by clicking the link of this sentence.

The important decorative art exhibition of 1902 which took place in Turin and the first event concerning modern decorative art, is recalled both through the original works exhibited at the time and through iconographic apparatus conceived as descriptive evidence of a city in full artistic ferment and industrial. Schools and factories, public housing and stately villas, public baths and immense buildings are all characterized by the common line of the Art Nouveau style which can be observed both in the exhibition and by walking around the city. With over 500 masterpieces distributed throughout the city, the exhibition has the informative purpose of placing emphasis on the historical period that is still lived and breathed today among the textures of the urban fabric of Turin. In the section dedicated to New languages for a new society, the furniture and interiors industry explodes from school publishing to the advertising graphics of magazines, in a Liberty that becomes the unifying language of an entire society, finding its greatest exponent precisely in Leonardo Bistolfi.

The exhibition takes the viewer on an immersive journey into a distant era characterized by the sounds and sparkles of the new modern era, offering a complete look at the aesthetics of works of architecture, interior design, decoration, graphics, fashion, painting, sculpture, literary texts, poetry and music. From this period characterized by a decorative symbolic research that deliberately abandons classic naturalism, the exhibition at Palazzo Madama offers a historical-artistic insight into the changes between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Liberty.Turin, the capital, therefore makes the aesthetics of the Belle Époque resonate, between notes of distant music and sinuous bodies in movement.

Discover the art nouveau treasures in Turin – To get more information, read article.