MA*GA AND MISSONI FOR ART AND EDUCATION

MISSONI S.P.A

The MISSONI fashion house was founded in 1953 when Ottavio Missoni and Rosita Jelmini began working together, combining Ottavio's experience in the production of knitted tracksuits and Rosita's passion for fashion, developed in the family tailoring business. Today, the Maison Missoni is one of the protagonists of ready-to-wear expressions of the highest Made in Italy craftsmanship, exporting all over the world the values of craftsmanship and heritage closely linked to contemporary artistic research. The corporate body that today enhances and communicates the brand's artistic heritage is the Missoni Archive, which preserves over 25,000 garments and safeguards the artistic work of Ottavio Missoni, consisting of patchwork tapestries, original drawings and textile studies.

MISSONI AND MA*GA: ART AND FASHION

The first collaboration with the Galleria d'Arte Moderna (GAM) in Gallarate, founded and directed by Silvio Zanella, dates back to 1995 with the exhibition Ottavio e Rosita Missoni Story. On display are 40 moodboards representing snapshots of 40 years of Ottavio and Rosita's life and work. In 2015, the exhibition MISSONI, L’ARTE, IL COLORE at MA*GA Museum and the Fashion and Textiles Museum in London (2016), is a tribute by the city of Gallarate to the fashion house that began its activity here. The exhibition explores the cultural roots that inspired Ottavio and Rosita Missoni and the dialogues that their work had with the artistic avant-garde of their contemporaries, emphasising the artistic component in Missoni's creative process, from the raw material - wool - to the fabrics, to the garments and finally to the Tapestries, the large patchworks of knitted fabric that Ottavio composed using scraps of fabric work.

In 2016, the Ottavio and Rosita Missoni Foundation and the MA*GA Museum signed an agreement to keep the Ottavio Missoni Tapestries Room permanently set up, which over the years has become a prestigious multifunctional space for the Museum to host conferences, presentations, concerts and conventions. In addition to tapestries, there are paintings and design drawings, photographs, textiles and archival documents displayed in periodic exhibitions aimed at exploring the links between Art and Fashion curated by the Missoni Archive and MA*GA: 
Ottavio Missoni. A Life in Colour (2021)
MISSONOGRAFIA. Missoni e l’Arte del tessuto serigrafato (2023)
FASHION REPORT: da Alfa a MISSONI (2023)
FASHION ILLUSTRATION. La Moda Missoni interpretata da Gladys Perint Palmer (2024)

INTRECCI: MA*GA AND MISSONI FOR ART AND EDUCATION

In 2021 from the synergy between Maison MISSONI, Fondazione Ottavio e Rosita Missoni, Archivio Missoni and Museo MA*GA comes the educational project INTRECCI. MA*GA e MISSONI PER L’ARTE E L’EDUCAZIONE: theoretical-practical courses for students, teachers and the Museum's public on the themes of colour, textile materials and surface design. The MA*GA, the Maison Missoni and the Fondazione Ottavio e Rosita Missoni are making 200 workshops available to students and teachers free of charge, to experiment and research on transversal expressive codes, using threads and colours, with the prospect of a grand final exhibition at the MA*GA. The workshops involve different audiences in creative experiences linked to the exploration of textile languages and conclude with the opening of the workshops and the presentation of the project outcomes.
At the end of INTRECCI #2 in 2023, the project had seen the involvement of around 15,000 participants, demonstrating a great interest in the interdisciplinary vision that underlies the co-design between company and museum.
Starting from January 2024, the activities of INTRECCI #3 offer the opportunity to get closer to the creative phases of Ottavio and Rosita Missoni through an encounter with the photographs, works and clothes on display in the Ottavio Missoni Tapestry Room. The students have the opportunity to reflect on the conceptual aspects of the works in the permanent collection and the temporary exhibitions, to learn to understand and communicate using shapes and colours and using the loom, a tool that has the extraordinary capacity to awaken new and unexpected creative talents in the participants.