Motherhood stars in Milan mega show

(ANSA) - Milan, August 27 - The evolution of motherhood as portrayed by artists in the 20th century stars at Milan's Palazzo Reale in one of this fall's most highly anticipated exhibits.
    La Grande Madre (The Great Mother) opened this week through November 26.
    It showcases 400 artworks by 139 of the most celebrated artists of the 1900s, offering the public a sweeping look at the artistic evolution of the mother figure from the avant-garde movements until the present day.
    The show is set to coincide with the end of the food-themed Universal Exposition running in Milan until October 31, and is one of the Expo in the City 2015 events organized in Italy's financial capital.
    The exhibit delves into nurturing, nourishment, and nutrition - issues that are central to both motherhood and the Expo world's fair, whose motto is Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life.
    It examines the archetype of motherhood - a stereotype strongly connected with Italy - to explore the historic, political and social aspects of the role.
    Organized in close cooperation with Beatrice Trussardi, the exhibit focuses first on the relationship between women and power over a key century for emancipation, mingling contemporary art with history by putting today's artworks alongside masterpieces from the past.
    La Grande Madre opens with a presentation of the collection of Olga Froebe-Kapteyn, with its thousands of images representing motherhood, including prehistoric goddesses.
    The show also focuses on the participation of women in avant-garde movements - Futurism, Dadaism and Surrealism - to highlight the transformation of gender roles at the beginning of the 20th century.
    The second part of the show highlights the evolution of Surrealism into an individual mythology whose symbolic strength also draws inspiration from archaic cultures as portrayed by Louise Bourgeois.
    In the 1960s and 1970s, women artists such as Mary Kelly and Yoko Ono created a new visual vocabulary to stress the centrality of the female body and question ideal notions of the hearth - traditionally a woman's territory - as a space that can also be one of tension and abuse.
    The exhibit also includes Camille Hernot's award-winning video Grosse Fatigue (Big Labor), which explores myths of creation and the birth of Mother Earth.
    Curator Massimiliano Gioni - artistic director of the Trussardi Foundation and the New Museum in New York - also selected work by artists such as Carla Accardi, Umberto Boccioni, Maurizio Cattelan, Salvador Dalì, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Lucio Fontana, Frida Kahlo, Jeff Koons, and Edward Munch.