ALCHIMIA. La rivoluzione del design italiano

After stops in Berlin and Milan, the exhibition Alchimia – The Revolution of Italian Design, arrives at the Italian Cultural Institute on the occasion of the Madrid Design Festival, from 6 February to 14 March 2026.

The first complete retrospective dedicated to the Milanese collective continues its international tour, thanks to the initiative of the Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Madrid, Elena Fontanella. The exhibition presents objects, furniture, drawings, and photographs that recount the radical experience of a unique movement in Italian design, winner of the Compasso d’Oro Award in 1981.

The Alchimia movement emerged during a period of profound social and cultural change as an open, interdisciplinary laboratory in which design, architecture, visual arts, fashion, music, and performance freely intertwined. The result was a dreamlike, utopian, and provocative design practice that rejected dominant functionalism in order to affirm the symbolic, narrative, and emotional value of objects.

Curated by François Burkhardt, Tobias Hoffmann, and Alessandro Guerriero.