The geometries. When I look at the Milan home in Via Mozart which the Necchi sisters entrusted to the care of the FAI through Giulia Maria Mozzoni Crespi, founder of the foundation, I’m struck by the geometries impressed by the architect Piero Portaluppi. It was he who designed the villa after being commissioned by Angelo Campiglio who, together with the Necchi sisters (Gigina, his wife, and Nedda), went to live there in the mid-Thirties.
As the story goes, one evening, on their way home from a performance at La Scala in Milan, the Campiglio spouses glimpsed through the fog a for sale sign regarding a garden and wasted no time in purchasing the property the following day: thus was born the villa project, a gathering place for friends and family invited to a poolside brunch or t0 enjoy Angelo’s speciality Negronis.
The principal façade introduces the recurrent geometric motifs with alternate combinations of Ceppo stone, granite and figured “Arabescato” marble, integrating a glazed wall in correspondence with the winter garden covered with a wooden treillage. Above all, however, the entrance features a star which on the opposite side, overlooking the tennis court, is countered by a sundial incised into the plasterwork: on one side the night sky, on the other the light of the sun.
Opened to the public in 2008, Villa Necchi Campiglio in fact houses three important collections donated to the FAI (by Claudia Gian Ferrari, by the Alighiero spouses and Emilietta de’Micheli and by the heirs of Guido Sforni), now an integral part of this home-cum-museum. A well-known gallerist and art historian, Claudia Gian Ferrari entrusted to the Fondazione part of her own collection comprising 45 works sculptures, paintings and prints from the 20tyh century by artists such as Carrà, Casorato, de Chirico, Martini, Morandi, Sironi, Severini and others.
