CASA MUSEO BOSCHI DI STEFANO

The House-MuseumThe Boschi Di Stefano House-Museum exhibits - in the rooms inhabited during the lifetime of Antonio Boschi (1896-1988) and Marieda Di Stefano (1901-1968) - a selection of around three hundred of the over two thousand works in their collection, donated to the City of Milan in 1974. The collection represents an extraordinary testimony to the history of 20th century Italian art - including paintings, sculptures and drawings - from the first decade of the 20th century to the end of the 1960s.
The works. The eleven exhibition spaces of the Casa-Museo Boschi Di Stefano house around three hundred of the more than two thousand works collected by Antonio and Marieda Boschi Di Stefano, distributed by adopting a chronological succession and qualitative selection criterion curated by Maria Teresa Fiorio, former Director of the Civic Art Collections of Milan. At the entrance there are portraits dedicated to the Boschi couple and ceramics by Marieda herself, and through a corridor with canvases by Severini and Boccioni one reaches the "sala del Novecento italiano" with works by Funi, Marussig, Tozzi, Carrà and Casorati.
The furnishings. One of Antonio Boschi's testamentary wishes was that the flat in Via Jan 15, where he and Marieda had long lived, should be opened to the public as a house-museum, housing a selection of the works they had collected. For safety and conservation reasons, it was not possible to maintain the original integrity of what Ornella Selvafolta describes as "an inhabited museum" where "the spaces, the layout, the furnishings are almost 'subjugated' to the reasons of art".
The Collectors. In 1927, the married life of Antonio Boschi and Marieda Di Stefano began. Having met the previous year during a holiday in Val Sesia, they immediately decided to get married, but the social conventions of the time imposed a period of engagement. He, born in 1896, is a young engineer from Novara, Marieda, born in Milan in 1901, already breathes a passion for art in her family, her father Francesco is a collector of works, especially of the Sarfatti twentieth century. Attracted by the material and colouristic possibilities offered by ceramics, Marieda took lessons in sculptor Luigi Amigoni's studio after her regular studies. Over the years she exhibited, with recognition, in many exhibitions, not only national. The foundation of the Ceramic School, which bears her name, dates back to 1962.