Showcases

The temporary exhibition " The Infancy of signs. Drawings of New Guinean Children from the Wirz Collection" is the tenth episode of MUSEC successful “Dèibambini” series, which took place at the Villa Heleneum (the previous location of the museum) between 2006 and 2014. 
The move of the museum to Villa Malpensata marked an interruption of the original project, but at the same time stimulated a critical rethinking of its methods. The idea of conceiving the museum as a privileged place for the making of "virtual universes" on a child's scale is maintained and the works of children's art of the past considered as a starting point and model for the thematic elaboration of expressive grammars. 
The idea is to build a bridge between yesterday and today, through the in-depth exploration of the expressive contents of specific and precise experiences of children's creativity. Contents that not only interconnect cultures with a formidable and substantial unity, but also that played a role of inexhaustible source for the renewal of artistic languages of the 20th century. 
The words of Francesco Paolo Campione, Director of MUSEC and creator of the series dedicated to children's creativity, are full of hope: "My deepest wish, as the "Dèibambini" project comes back to life, is that our bridge may be solid and full of poetry, linking generations of young artists through the use of drawing, painting and sculpture. These are tools within everyone's grasps and they allow free and autonomous appropriation of spaces of an imagination. An imagination that is perhaps all too threatened today by an uncontainable invasion of technology'".

There are 79 drawings of New Guinean children on display at Spazio Maraini in Villa Malpensata, all made between 1952 and 1953. The children's drawings come together with 7 serigraphs on paper from the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt am Main made by Timothy Akis (c. 1944-1984) and Mathias Kauage (c. 1944-2003) — two Papua New Guinean artists who belong to the same generation of the young artists featured in the exhibition — and 11 works of Sepik ethnic art from the Brignoni Collection (MUSEC). The ethnic art works are exhibited both in the Spazio Maraini, with the children's drawings, and in the Spazio Tesoro, together with a video interview with Dadi Wirz, conducted at the end of 2021 by Moira Luraschi and Paolo Maiullari, researchers at MUSEC.

The catalogue that accompanies the exhibition is the result of a long interdisciplinary research and provides a precious opportunity to investigate our way of seeing childhood and interpreting the deep reasons for creativity. The graphic design by Valeria Zevi is a restyling of the original graphic project of the Maurice Hoderas series.
L’infanzia del segno. Disegni di bambini della Nuova Guinea della Collezione Wirz, edited by Anna Castelli and Isabella Lenzo Massei, Dèibambini/10, Edizioni Fondazione culture e musei, Lugano 2022. 244 pages. ISBN 978-12-80443-15-1. With an introduction by Francesco Paolo Campione (Il progetto "Dèibambini"), some research notes by Dadi Wirz ("L'arte dei bambini della Nuova Guinea. Alcune concise osservazioni"); an interview with Dadi Wirz by Moira Luraschi ("Un tesoro a lungo segreto") and texts by Isabella Lenzo Massei ("L'eco del segno"), Christian Kaufmann ("I bambini di Dadi Wirz") and Anna Castelli ("Vedere nel disegno"). The volume is completed by reproductions of 229 children's drawings from the Wirz Collection; 15 black and white photographs and 1 drawing by Dadi Wirz; 7 serigraphs by Timothy Akis and Mathias Kauage (New Guinea) and 11 works from the Sepik (New Guinea) stylistic area belonging to the Brignoni Collection (MUSEC).

The cover of the tenth project of the Dèibambini series