Art Nouveau in Milan indicates the spread of such artistic style in the city of Milan between the early years of the 20th century and the outbreak of the First World War. In the Lombard capital, art nouveau, called Stile Liberty in Italian, found—thanks to its close relationship with the rampant industrial bourgeoisie of the time—a fertile ground for its rapid development, during which it oscillated between the influences of French Art Nouveau, German Jugendstil and eclecticism.
At the beginning of the 20th century the Milanese bourgeois class, formed as a result of industrialization and already becoming masters of the social and economic life of the city, found in the new liberty style a "symbol of status" and the occasion to show its power and at the same time underline the clear departure from the noble class and its neoclassical and baroque residences. The Milan International world's fair of 1906 gave further impetus to the development of liberty, as dozens of pavilions and numerous public buildings were built in this style, which decreed the definitive consecration of liberty as the dominant artistic style in the city. Reaching its peak in 1906, Milanese liberty experienced the first contaminations with eclectic architecture, which became stronger and stronger until the years of World War I, after which the liberty survived only with minor influences on minor architecture, while the taste of the industrial bourgeoisie converged spontaneously towards art deco. The Milan Central Station, built from 1924 in a late-eclectic style with Art Deco decorations and modernist influences, is considered by Gualdoni and Melano the conclusion of art nouveau in Milan, which made room for art deco and Italian Novecento.
The Milanese stage of the liberty style was inaugurated with the construction of the Palazzo Castiglioni, completed in 1903 according to the project of Giuseppe Sommaruga, who would become, according to Sacerdoti, the most prominent interpreter of Milanese art nouveau.
Alongside traditional sculpture in marble and stone, art nouveau brought about a great development of sculpture in wrought iron and cement. According to Ogliari and Bagnera, wrought iron found its best interpreter in Alessandro Mazzucotelli, who elevated the working of this material from a simple decorative element to a true art. In addition to sculptural works integrated into architecture or simply ornamental, it was in the funeral monuments of the Monumental Cemetery of Milan that, according to Roiter, the most important laboratory of art nouveau sculpture developed, which, as in the case of architecture, merged in a more or less accentuated way with eclectic and art deco themes.
Historical framework and general characteristics After the National Exhibition of 1881, twenty years after the Italian Unification, the city of Milan was definitively established as the main Italian industrial center. The city saw the formation of a new emerging bourgeois class related to industry and commerce, made up of master builders, landowners and entrepreneurs who within a few decades would equal in prosperity and importance the city's old nobility.
At the beginning of the 20th century the bourgeois class, by now master of the social and economic life of the city, found in the liberty style, a novelty coming from France and introduced in Italy at Palermo and the Turin Exhibition of 1902, the "symbol of its status" and the occasion to show its power and at the same time underline the clear distance from the noble class and its neoclassical and baroque residences. This almost exclusive relationship between the new ruling class and the new architectural style, as well as the move away from the architectural models of the "old" aristocratic class, seem evident when one notes that, while the new bourgeoisie elevated residences à la mode following the new dictates of liberty, the more conservative commissions related to the old financial and ecclesiastical world—among which the new bank headquarters in the Piazza Cordusio area stand out—remained attached to the already decadent eclectic style, in vogue in the 19th century.
The Milan Universal Exposition of 1906 gave further impetus to the development of liberty, as dozens of pavilions were built in this style at the exposition site and numerous public buildings, thus decreeing the definitive consecration of liberty as the dominant artistic style in the city. Although very articulated and differentiated, the Milanese art nouveau experience shows as a whole some common points and novelties: the decoration of buildings in wrought iron or decorative cement, with floral or animal themes is recurrent; at the structural level the use of reinforced concrete stands out. It is common the use of painting on the walls of the buildings, often with ceramic tiles, and the caryatids and hermas taken from the architecture of the Milanese noble palaces. However, despite the very rich display of applied arts liberty developed in the city, architecture and interior decoration found it difficult to conform to the new style and except for a few episodes were dominated by late-eclectic styles.
Reaching its peak in 1906, Milanese liberty experienced the first contaminations with eclectic architecture, which became stronger and stronger until the years of the First World War, after which liberty survived only with minor influences on minor architecture, while the taste of the industrial bourgeoisie converged spontaneously towards art déco.
Private architecture
The Milanese stage of the liberty style was inaugurated with the construction of the Palazzo Castiglioni, completed in 1903 according to the project of Giuseppe Sommaruga, who would become, according to Sacerdoti, the most prominent interpreter of Milanese art nouveau. The building, decorated with cement sculptures of floral theme and wrought iron compositions typical of the new style, distances itself from art nouveau by its monumental forms and the use of classical elements such as the putti, taken from the nearby noble palaces, where the neoclassical style dominates. The palace, considered by Lopez, Susani and Roiter one of the best examples of Italian art nouveau and built in one of the most elegant streets of Milan, remarked even more clearly the status of the new bourgeois class and introduced with force in the city the use of cement as a sculptural element. The "breaking signal" thrown to the old ruling class was even more intense due to the presence on both sides of the entrance of two statues representing two naked women in very daring poses, which caused a great scandal, to the point that the palace was colloquially renamed by the Milanese la ca' di ciapp (the "house of the buttocks") in reference to the subsequent nudity of the two women and the architect was forced to remove them and move them to the then peripheral Villa Faccanoni, another example of a liberty, suburban villa also designed by Sommaruga, in which the putti sculptures and the motif of the windows divided by columns on the top floor of Palazzo Castiglioni were reproduced.
According to Sacerdoti, another leading interpreter of Milanese art nouveau was Giovanni Battista Bossi, who has in the Casa Galimberti his most famous work. The facade of this building presents a complex decoration with ceramic tiles painted with human forms and plant elements that show elaborate chromatic contrasts. Also noteworthy are the decorated balconies made of cement and the wrought iron a baldaquino balconies. A few meters away is the Casa Guazzoni, also by Bossi, which despite retaining the typically floral style of the facade presents a decoration completely centered on sculpture with elaborate putti devices, female figures and plant forms also in cement and wrought iron with overlapping balconies. Bossi lastly designed the Casa Alessio, more akin to the Viennese Secession style with its rigid geometries and the vertical strip in correspondence with the entrance.
A rare example of self-enclosure was the Casa Campanini, which the architect and real estate entrepreneur Alfredo Campanini designed as his own residence in 1904. The composition of the facade shows at a general level a strong inspiration in the work of Sommaruga, in particular by the sculptures of female figures at the entrance, explicit homage to the portal of Palazzo Castiglioni. The classic wooden entrance gate is replaced here by a wrought iron gate with plant motifs, the same motif of the balconies, made by Alessandro Mazzucotelli: other wrought iron decorative elements are also his, which, together with the frescoes and stained glass windows, constitute a typically modernist interior decoration, without any trace of eclectic influences, something uncommon in many other contemporary buildings in the city.
On the fringe of the logic of creation of new residential areas dedicated to the bourgeois class, the Casa Ferrario was built from 1902 according to the project of Ernesto Pirovano in Via Spadari, one of the most central and oldest streets of Milan. The notoriety of this building, still substantially traditional in design and relatively sober in the other elements, is due to the wrought iron decorations of the overlapping balconies with spiral motifs and floral decoration with corbels shaped like griffin also made by Mazzucotelli, considered by Sacerdoti one of the greatest wrought iron artists in Italy.
In contrast to the floral branch of the Milanese liberty led by Sommaruga, we can cite the Casa Donzelli by Ulisse Stacchini, in which, despite the clear influences of Sommaruga, a composition with austere lines typical of the art nouveau of the German area can be appreciated, and the Casa Agostoni, in which some typical liberty elements such as natural themes and sculpture in cement join a typically decimononic facade configuration and classical elements such as bas-reliefs.
Alongside housing for the upper middle class, a large number of liberty style dwellings were built in Milan for the small and middle bourgeoisie. The construction of these buildings, not being able to dispose of high investments, used mass-produced ceramic decorations and industrial cement statues, simpler wrought iron decorations and a particular attention to the reduction of common spaces not strictly necessary. Examples of this type of commissions are the Casa Dugnani and the Casa Biraghi, in which stand out the maiolicas with floral theme mass-produced by Richard Ginori.
A particular branch of bourgeois architecture are the buildings dedicated to mixed use, as a residential place and for industrial or commercial activity. One can cite, for example, the Casa Laugier, built for the valdostana family. Laugier, to house, in addition to housing, the pharmacy of the family. The building, which was designed by the architect Antonio Tagliaferri in forms inspired by Viennese art nouveau, resorts to all the typical decorations of Italian art nouveau such as panels, cement and wrought iron to compose forms derived from the animal and vegetable kingdom, although in a balanced way. The decoration, however, is more sober and resorts to clay bricks typical of the Lombard Renaissance that predominates in the street.