10 works of art to discover in Milan's public parks

Alberto Burri's Teatro Continuo, built in 1973 for the 15th Milan Triennale, is an open theater structure located in Sempione Park. Made up of six mobile panels painted black and white, its position sets up a kind of telescopic perspective that frames the Castello Sforzesco on one side and the Arco della Pace on the other. Originally conceived as a free space accessible to the public, it was demolished in 1989 due to the severely deteriorating condition of the structure, and then rebuilt in 2015, on the occasion of 2015 Milan Expo and the centenary of the great artist's birth.

On the occasion of the 15th Milan Triennale, the exhibition curated by Giulio Macchi Contatto Arte-Città aimed to bring art closer to citizens by transforming urban spaces in a participatory way. Among the twelve works commissioned for Parco Sempione, in addition to Burri's Teatro Continuo, is Giorgio Amelio Roccamonte's unique Chiosco Scultura (Sculpture Kiosk). It is a sculpture made entirely of reinforced concrete that serves as a small pavilion for reading, accessible to everyone.

Another legacy work from Macchi's 1973 Milan Triennale project in Parco Sempione is Arman's Accumulazione Musicale. The concept of accumulation is central to the artist's vision, and in the case of this public sculpture, Arman incorporated iron chairs of different shapes into a concrete casting to form tiers, while trumpets and other musical instruments emerge from the podium, creating a structure resembling a theatrical cavea serving the city. Currently degraded by weathering, restoration work is planned for this work to clean and consolidate the structure.

One of the city's iconic works of public art can be found in Parco Sempione, in the garden of Triennale Milano: these are the Bagni Misteriosi by Giorgio De Chirico, also created in 1973 for the XV Triennale. Emerging from a gracefully shaped pool, two swimmers are part of an intriguing installation that also includes a trampoline, a ball, and several additional features. This artwork was extensively restored, with the process concluding in 2015 for the Expo event. Inside the Museo del Novecento, the original sculptures of the swimmers and the fish are on display, replaced by copies in the original location.

Among the archistars' buildings in the CityLife district, the public park designed by Gustafson Porter studios in a group with Melk, One Works, and Ove Arup hosts several public works from the ArtLine project. These include Riccardo Benassi's Daily Desiderio (2018): a minimal aluminum structure with a LED display that broadcasts a new text message every day, managed by an autonomous broadcasting system. The cycle of messages will continue throughout the artist's lifetime and, after his death, will begin again on a loop.

Fausto Melotti's sculpture I Sette Savi (The Seven Sages), placed in the garden of the PAC and visible from inside through the large, luminous stained-glass window that is the protagonist of the building designed by Ignazio Gardella, depicts seven Carrara marble figures immersed in nature, a symbol of silent mysticism. The artwork currently displayed at the Milan institution is the most recent version, completed in 1981. The original piece, titled Constant Man, was crafted in 1936 for the VI Triennale under the commission of the BBPR studio, but it was later lost.

I quattro cavalieri dell'apocalisse e il bianco cavallo della pace (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the White Horse of Peace) is a sculpture by Harry-Pierre Rosenthal, located in the Porta Venezia Public Gardens, named after Indro Montanelli since 2002. The artist, born in Vienna in 1922, as a self-taught artist began to focus on sculpture in 1946, with his first solo exhibition in Paris in 1968. The four horsemen work purchased by the City of Milan in 1976, consists of four statues of horsemen on plinths of different heights: two horses are depicted rampant, one in slender forward motion, and one in a static position. A fifth statue without a plinth depicts a stationary horse in the act of grazing grass.

The Alfa Romeo Industry Park - Portello, opened in 2011 and designed by architects Charles Jencks and Andreas Kipar, is a green area in the residential neighborhood of the same name. The park is divided into three areas designed according to a symbology all related to time. On the main knoll a path is defined that winds following a double helix shape culminating at its highest point with Charles Jencks' metal sculpture Helix, a tribute to the theme of life, but also to the city that has been able to transform and regenerate its spaces, just like that of the park that stands on the former Alfa Romeo area.

In the NoLo area, Trotter Park is home to a large black-and-white mural created in 2020 by the famous Roman street artist duo Sten Lex, as part of a participatory art project for the renewal of the suburbs promoted by Casa degli artisti and Lacittàintorno. The two artists, known for their distinctive style with the stencil technique, have created a work that reflects the history of the place, with a strong connection to the community and its surroundings. The work includes two murals, the first entitled Industrial Landscape Landscape on the via Padova side, and Screen, stencil poster adjacent to the Trotter Park School and the former Boarding School.

A contemporary sculpture that is a literal tribute to Leonardo da Vinci and his genius: it stands at the entrance to the Milan Hippodrome and was created by artist Nina Akamu in 1999, but its story begins several centuries earlier. Ludovico Sforza in 1482 commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to create the world's largest equestrian statue in honor of his father, but the project remained unfinished. Resumed in the 1970s by an American collector and entrepreneur, it was completed in the late 1990s by the Japanese-American artist. The statue was then donated to the city of Milan, thus fulfilling a dream that dated back to the Renaissance.