Gillo Dorfles Foundation to Turn His Home into a Museum

On what would have been his 108th birthday, the Gillo Dorfles Foundation is being established, with his Milan home transformed into a house-museum open to scholars by appointment. The foundation, coordinated by art critic Luigi Sansone and backed by Dorfles's heirs, will preserve his library of thousands of books on philosophy, aesthetics, art, design, and architecture, along with artworks gifted by artist friends and his own paintings. The archive of manuscripts and typescripts is being organized, with hopes of finding unpublished writings. Public and private funding is sought to make the foundation operational. Dorfles (1910–2018) was a pivotal figure in aesthetics, philosophy, and art criticism, known for introducing the concept of kitsch to Italian criticism in 1968. He co-founded the Movimento di Arte Concreta (MAC) in Milan in 1948 with Atanasio Soldati, Bruno Munari, and Gianni Monnet, and the Associazione per il disegno industriale (ADI) in 1960. His major works include 'Ultime tendenze nell’arte d’oggi' (1961), 'Il Kitsch' (1969), and 'Le oscillazioni del gusto' (1970). As an artist, his first paintings date to his twenties, with exhibitions at Libreria Salto in Milan and with MAC. Major retrospectives include 'Gillo Dorfles. L’avanguardia tradita' in Milan (2010) and 'Gillo Dorfles. Essere nel tempo' at MACRO Rome (2015), curated by Achille Bonito Oliva.