The Boschi Di Stefano House Museum

The collection is an extraordinary example of twentieth-century Italian art and
reveals many interesting facets of Milan's cultural history from the twenties to the seventies and even slightly beyond.

Marieda, born in Milan in 1901 to a family originally from the Marche region, had studied sculpture at the artist Luigi Amigoni's studio. These early influences led her to begin working with ceramics, which became a lifelong passion.

Antonio and Marieda, who met while on holiday in Val Sesia, shared a love of art. Shortly after their wedding, the newlyweds moved into the building at Via Jan 15, built by Marieda's father Francesco Di Stefano under the artistic direction of Piero Portaluppi.
Over time, they amassed a collection of around two thousand works including paintings, sculptures and pieces of ancient art. As friends and supporters of the art world, they embraced the vitality and variety that the city of Milan had to offer and became the owners of many paintings emblematic of Italy's artistic culture.

In addition to travelling with her husband, Marieda continued to cultivate her interest in ceramics. From 1953 onwards, she exhibited her sculptures on an almost annual basis at the Montenapoleone Gallery and contributed to numerous collective exhibitions and competitions in cities across Italy. Building on her natural flair and growing recognition, she later opened a School of Ceramics on the ground floor of the apartment block on Via Jan.

Marieda passed away in 1968. Inspired by the love of art that he shared with his wife, Antonio Boschi was to donate their collection of works to the Municipality of Milan in 1974.

Around the same time, Antonio Boschi made a second donation to the Municipality of Milan on the eve of his death in 1987, which included works acquired after the death of his wife, Marieda. The breadth and unique nature of the collection were such that, alongside a project to establish a museum dedicated to contemporary art (which gradually crystallised into the idea of using the Palazzo dell'Arengario in Piazza Duomo), works began to convert the couple's apartment into a house museum.

However, the arrangement of the paintings in a sort of picture gallery, covering the walls all the way up to the ceiling, is a faithful representation of how the rooms looked when the Boschi family
still lived there, as demonstrated by a series of photographs taken by Gabriele Basilico.

The exhibition, curated by Maria Teresa Fiorio, is set up to present the works chronologically, making it more accessible to the public.

Save for a few pieces, the furnishings of the House Museum were purchased specially by the Boschi Di Stefano Foundation to match the style of the building and the era in which the collection was founded and developed.

As Antonio Boschi recalled in 1974, the collection stemmed from his association with Marieda Di Stefano

«When I met Marieda and discovered the similarities that unconsciously brought us together, it was a classic "coup de foudre". My experience with the plastic arts was limited; my father had guided me towards music and studying the violin, which was and still is one of my passions. What's more, the troubled times of my youth during the First World War followed by two years abroad in Budapest for work had prevented me from focusing on art. Marieda, meanwhile, came from a family from the Marche who had relocated to Milan, so she had the central Italian passion for the plastic arts in her blood. Her father, shaken by the first exhibition of the Novecento movement, had already started a collection of his own, and we inherited some paintings when he passed away. When we married in 1927, it spurred on the passion that we both carried within us, with each of us pushing the other to overcome any concerns about our fairly modest household budget, which was that of a young engineer working for a major manufacturer».

...followed by Morlotti, Dova, Ajmone, Chighine, Bergolli, Crippa, etc.

As one moves through the rooms of the second-floor apartment in the prominent building designed by architect Piero Portaluppi in the 1920s, the House Museum reveals the profound link between the individual experience of collecting and the history of the land to which it belongs.