Some paintings are less about what they show than about where they lead. This exhibition gathers around forty contemporary paintings, drawings and prints built on a single motif: the opening in a wall. Arches, doorways, windows and gates appear again and again, each one framing a piece of world that the room itself cannot contain.
The lineage is a long one. Renaissance painters used open windows to set a landscape behind a portrait. Giorgio de Chirico, in the years around 1914, filled his empty squares with arcades and dark doorways that seemed to lead nowhere at all. Later painters stripped the motif down further, until the threshold became a pure shape: a pale arch in a dark field, a circle of light in a green wall.
What you will see
The works on show are quiet and mostly small. Many use a restricted palette of deep greens, blacks and ivories. Water recurs, usually still, often reflected in a polished floor so that the room seems to continue below itself. The effect, room after room, is of a slow, deliberate stillness that rewards unhurried looking.
- Around forty works by contemporary painters and printmakers
- A reading room with books on metaphysical painting and its legacy
- A short guided tour every Saturday at 11:00, included in the ticket
Visiting
The exhibition is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00, with late opening until 21:00 on Thursdays. It is closed on 25 December and 1 January. Tickets are valid for one entry and can be bought at the door or online; visitors under eighteen enter free.
Galleria Soglia occupies the ground floor of a former printworks, and every room is accessible by wheelchair. Lockers are available for coats and bags, which is worth knowing in the Milan winter.
