«L’odore del silenzio». La mostra Nuova Arte Italiana di Franco Albini e Franca Helg al Liljevalchs Konsthall di Stoccolma

For the New Italian Art exhibition, held at the Liljevalchs Konsthall in Stockholm in 1953, Franco Albini and Franca Helg designed a display characterised by the use of white, pink, and green tarlatan elements. “The design was limited to installing some veils that diffused the light more evenly and decorated the rooms a little”, wrote Franco Albini about the project. In this way, visitors move within a rarefied space, where Albini and Helg, taking advantage of the existing rooms designed by Carl Bergsten in 1916, create a more intimate dimension within the building’s monumental double-height hall. Through the consultation of unpublished documents preserved at the Albini Foundation in Milan, this paper aims to explore how, by suspending a series of curtains below the height of the skylights, the designers were able to create much more intimate spaces, enveloped in a soft, filtered light.