Amazing documents!

Grubicy’s collection also features a few objects, such as this box containing various tools of the trade.
Grubicy started creating art under the influence of Dutch painters – namely Anton Mauve – and his works were exhibited at important events such as the Triennale di Milano and the Venice Biennale.
The box contains various brushes, bottles, paints, containers, palettes, and a funnel for paint thinners.

Censi’s archive also contains photographs, which date back to 1915 and show numerous jewels adorning the dancer’s body.
In with the documents were a few pieces of personal and stage jewellery dating back to the 1930s and 1940s.

A few examples? A silver pendant engraved with the dancer’s initials (GC), three hair pins, and a snake-shaped necklace.

Sarfatti’s archive also includes a few objects. These are mostly memories related to her life and travels, such as a small box containing fragments of stones and mosaic collected in Tunisia in 1923 – an experience that led the writer to publish Tunisiaca that same year.

This curious cardboard box – which once held the first volume of the Treccani Encyclopaedia – contains plaster casts of 35 Greek coins dating back to the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries BC.
But why is it included in the Mart’s Archivio del ’900? Because it was gifted to Margherita Sarfatti by Sicily’s Archaeological Superintendency at the time, Rovereto-born Paolo Orsi – testament to their shared passion for classical antiquity.

Baj was partly responsible for bringing ‘Pataphysics to Italy (yes, apostrophe and all!), which was the science of the imaginary realm, as promoted by the writer Alfred Jarry. Taking the French Collège de ‘Pataphysique as a model, with which he had come into contact, Baj founded the Institutum ‘Pataphysicum Mediolanense in Milan in 1963.
This is the institute’s heraldic flag, displayed during pataphysical dinners at the Cassina de Pomm, along the Naviglio Martesana in Milan.

This standard is taken from Baj’s house and was most likely purchased by the artist due to its unique appearance.
Dating back to the beginning of the 20th century, the standard references the pension fund for Italian chimney sweepers in France, and one such worker is embroidered on the lower part of the standard.

This postcard-work by Amelia Etlinger was made in 1973 for the Cards From the World exhibition held at the Centro Tool run by Ugo Carrega in Milan. Dozens of artists, such as Ben Vautier, Mirella Bentivoglio, Ketty La Rocca, Eugenio Miccini and Bruno Munari participated in the event. In fact, it was one of the first Mail Art exhibitions in Italy.
The exhibition featured 165 postcards, all of which are held in the Fraccaro-Carrega collection, along with photographs of some of the postcards hanging from the ceiling on thin nylon threads.

Along with artists’ books, postcards and stamps featuring his own portrait, Cavellini loved to glorify his own name using stickers.
This is undoubtedly the best known of those self-produced by the artist, starting in 1973. Printed in the tens of thousands, it advertises a non-existent exhibition for Cavellini’s 100th birthday which, according to the artist, was to be held at the Palazzo Ducale in 2014.
In many ways, the ‘sticker’ is symbolic of the artist, as it was used by Cavellini in countless performances and has reached every corner of the world.

Cavellini’s self-historicisation also consisted of real international tours that took the artist to the United States and Japan.
One such tour is documented by a pin celebrating the anniversary of his arrival in Osaka in October 1986. Here, in the Shitenno-ji temple, Cavellini wrote part of his autobiography on the shaved head of Shōzō Shimamoto, leader of the avant-garde group Gutai, which published Cavellini Japan that same year – a Japanese anthology on Cavellinian thought.