Zoran Mušic's 'Stanza di Zurigo' Reconstructed in Gorizia

The 'Stanza di Zurigo' (Zurich Room), a total artwork by Slovenian artist Zoran Mušic (1909–2005), has been reassembled in Gorizia, Italy, as part of the Nova Gorica – Gorizia European Capital of Culture program. Created between the late 1940s and early 1950s, the room was originally commissioned by Swiss sisters Charlotte and Nelly Dornacher to decorate the basement of their villa in Zollikon, near Zurich. Mušic painted murals on plaster, linen, and jute, designed embroidered motifs for curtains and tablecloths, and selected furniture with the owners. The reconstruction at Palazzo Attems Petzenstein evokes themes from his early career: Dalmatian women on horseback, donkeys, horses, ferries, decorative bands, and hieratic faces reminiscent of Campigli, alongside a self-portrait and a mirror portrait of his wife Ida Barbarigo. The room was saved from abandonment by Paolo Cadorin, Barbarigo's brother and former head of restoration at the Kunstmuseum Basel, who supervised the detachment of the plasters and their transfer onto aluminum panels. The exhibition also features over 100 works from the 1930s to 2000, drawn from the artist's archive and private collections. Curator Daniela Ferretti describes the room as a compendium of Mušic's post-Dachau production, with the exhibition following a chronological-thematic path ending with a reconstruction of his studio using original furnishings from Paris and Venice, including his last unfinished canvas.