A pleasant Milanese day gives visitors the chance to break away from the usual destinations and embark on a retro itinerary, visiting exhibitions.

Three locations for two unique exhibitions: starting with Mudec (Museo delle Culture di Milano), which houses masterpieces by Dali, Magritte and Surrealism from the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum. The stunning architecture perfectly matches the works on display. The dreamlike atmosphere that amazes and enlivens each room is of rare beauty and intensity.

Bizarre, avant-garde, sometimes pleasantly disturbing works (we suggest, in this regard, a visit away from the most popular times, to fully savour the suffused atmospheres), to (re)discover a unique movement, which attempted - successfully - to cross boundaries and conventions, confronting the colonial question and giving life to a true ethnographic surrealism. Memorable, in this sense, is the manifesto 'Ne visitez pas l'Exposition coloniale' signed in 1931 by Breton and Éluard.

The exhibition differs from the more recent events dedicated to the Surrealists in wanting to give a complete portrait of them, hosting well-known and lesser-known paintings, accompanying them with graphic works, photographs, sculptures and a superb editorial excusus.

The Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam is one of the leading Dutch museums with an extensive collection ranging from the Middle Ages to the present day. Starting in the 1950s, it was decided that Surrealism would be the main current in the permanent collection, with exhibitions dedicated to Magritte and Dali in the 1960s and 1970s.

Launched, officially, with the famous 1924 Manifesto (which can be admired in the exhibition), Surrealism set out to change the mindset of artists and viewers, starting in the suburbs of Paris, the first meeting place for artists and writers, adherents from all over the world. A child of the Dada movement that had preceded it, the Surrealist impulse borrowed many anarchic and subversive ideas.

However, do not be misled by the choice of the three pivotal masters chosen to give the exhibition its title, which hosts dozens of masterpieces poised between dream and reality, born from the most brilliant minds of the time. The Freudian 'dreaming mind' is, in fact, at the centre of Paul Delvaux's tableaux, the graphics by Max Ernest or Kristians Tonny, as well as the disturbing images by Hans Bellmer.

Unmissable from every point of view, ‘Dali, Magritte, Man Ray e il Surrealismo’ is accompanied by an exhaustive catalogue, published by 24Ore Cultura, which allows you to "relive" it whenever you wish.

The Milanese itinerary continues and takes us to the city centre for 'FuturLiberty', a diffuse exhibition hosted in the rooms of the Museo del Novecento (the national centre of choice for Futurist art) and Palazzo Morando (Museum of Costume, Fashion and Image, a few minutes' walk away).

The exhibition takes its cue from the words of a leaflet written by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1914, in which he rails against those artists from across the Channel whom he considers 'passatist': William Morris, Oscar Wilde and the Pre-Raphaelites; urging his English Futurist friend Nevinson to attack. In fact, this stance gave rise to the Vorticist movement, which is compared to Futurism by this very successful exhibition.

Featuring over 200 works, arriving from Italy and London, it investigates the link between painting and the applied arts with such authors as: Boccioni, Balla, Severini, Carrà, who confront each other with speed and dynamism, as well as with Morris & Co. textiles (a pivotal piece of the entire exhibition that must be savoured in both locations) and the only two issues of the ‘Blast’ magazine, a name desired by its signatory Ezra Pound.

The choice of the term ‘Liberty’ for the title is deliberate, in order to reinforce the comparison between what was happening in Italy and the differences with other countries, also reminding of the name of the London emporium conceived by Arthur Lasenby Liberty, in 1875, and inspired by Morris's Arts and Crafts Movement.

Paintings, drawings, furniture, clothing and tapestries explore the relationship between the artists examined and 'light'. Crowning the exhibition are projected images of Art Nouveau Milan with breath-taking details and architecture by such unforgettable engineers as Sommaruga. Not forgetting, for David Bowie and non-Bowie fans alike, an extremely pleasant treat dedicated to the myth of Ziggy Stardust.

Accompanying the exhibition is a guide published by Electa to admire, even more closely, the admirable details of the individual works on display.