Mostre, 31.03.2025—05.10.2025
The exhibition is part of a pluriannual project that the m.a.x. museo periodically dedicates to means of transport, following the exhibitions Auto che passione (Cars, what a passion) in 2018 and Treni fra arte, grafica e design (Trains in art, graphics and design) in 2021. This time, it offers a comprehensive reflection on the social and cultural significance of two-wheeled means of transport, interpreted through the history of graphics and design. In the second half of the 19th century and early 20th century, the industrial revolution brought with it a whole series of discoveries and changes that still influence our way of life today, characterised by movement and speed. In this context, bicycles and motorcycles played an important role.The exhibition features materials of great interest in the museum’s four rooms: from wonderful chromolithographic posters by masters of graphic design such as Leopoldo Metlicovitz, Marcello Dudovich, Plinio Codognato, Achille Luciano Mauzan, Gino Boccasile, Erberto Carboni and Armando Testa; to posters made by other graphic processes, advertising graphics, sketches, postcards, brochures and various design objects related to bicycles and motorcycles. Design is the other distinctive element of the exhibition, and in fact, the graphic productions are accompanied by iconic original bicycles and motorcycles: about twenty in total, from the early days to the models ‘of the future’ representing the brands that have most marked the evolution of two-wheeled transport, including rare examples produced in Switzerland.
To mark its openness to contemporary art, the exhibition continues outside the m.a.x. museum with the ‘bosco dei manifesti’ (forest of posters), around thirty sketches, drawings and renderings of motorcycles by internationally renowned designer Rodolfo Frascoli.
The exhibition has been made possible thanks to important loans, in particular from the Museo Nazionale Collezione Salce in Treviso, the Museo del Falegname ‘Tino Sana’, the Museo privato-Collezioni Alfredo Azzini in Soresina and the Museo Piaggio in Pontedera. Loans from valuable private collections, many of which are housed in Ticino, a region that is particularly rich in enthusiasts, have also been particularly valuable.
Exhibition curated by Stefano Pivato, Giorgio Sarti and Nicoletta Ossanna Cavadini.
m.a.x. museo
Via Dante Alighieri 6
6830 Chiasso
Switzerland