Improving the Quality of Expression in Today’s Civilisation

The 11th Triennale di Milano was recognised by the BIE on 15 May 1956 and held between July and November 1957. Its exhibitions were organised under the theme “Improving the Quality of Expression in Today’s Civilisation.”

As in the previous edition, an exhibition was organised on the industrial product, organised by Gillo Dorfles, Leonardo Ricci, Rosselli and Zanuso, with the collaboration of the Association of Italian Designers (ADI), founded two years earlier in Ponti’s studio. The exhibition was able to count on the innovations of cutting edge manufacturers, and a field of inquiry that was better defined than the somewhat generic one of the architectural panorama.

The section devoted to architecture, coordinated by Agnoldomenico Pica, involved the participation of some outstanding figures, including Alvar Aalto, Giulio Carlo Argan, Pietro Lingeri, Giovanni Michelucci, Luigi Moretti, Giuseppe Vaccaro and modern architecture historian Nikolaus Pevsner.

With 19 countries represented, international participation was particularly prominent, and was complemented by a survey of sculpture over the previous 50 years. Works by late nineteenth-century masters, including Rodin, Renoir and Matisse, were set up in Parco Sempione alongside creations by contemporary sculptors Constantin Brancusi, Pablo Picasso, Umberto Boccioni, Arturo Martini, Henry Moore and Alexander Calder.