Until January 2025, more than 80 works confiscated from the mafia by the Italian authorities are on display at the Palazzo Reale in Milan. The exhibition will then continue to Reggio Calabria, the stronghold of the mafia ‘Ndrangheta.
Organized by the General Directorate of Museums of the Ministry of Culture, the National Agency for Assets Seized and Confiscated from Organized Crime (ANBSC), the Municipality of Milan and the City of Reggio Calabria, in collaboration with the Ministry of the Interior, The exhibition features works by major painters like Giorgio de Chirico, Lucio Fontana, Salvador Dalí, Andy Warhol and others, as well as press clippings and police videos.
Among the works on display, 20 were seized in 2016 as part of an operation targeting a leader of the mafia group ‘Ndrangheta. The others were confiscated after Italian authorities dismantled an international money laundering network in 2011. Two Van Gogh paintings worth 55 million euros are also shown. These works were found in 2016 at the home of a trafficker linked to the mafia, Raffaele Imperiale, and had been missing for 14 years after their theft in Amsterdam.
This itinerant project is part of the mission “Art in the service of culture and legality”. This aims to celebrate “the beauty of extraordinary works of art while reaffirming the victory of the State against organized crime”in the words of the Undersecretary of State of the Ministry of the Interior, Wando Ferro.
At the end of the traveling exhibition, the works will join museum collections in Milan, Rome, Naples and Cosenza. Others will join the permanent collections of the Palazzo della Cultura “P. Crupi” in Reggio Calabria, dedicated to the restitution of cultural heritage confiscated from the mafia. It was created in 2016 from the collection seized from a mafioso and is named after an Italian writer. While perhaps waiting to find their rightful owners.
