At ZEGNA's Milan headquarters, designed by Antonio Citterio and Patricia Viel, the environment echoes the atmosphere of Oasi Zegna, integrating art and architecture into a continuous narrative. Works by artists such as Michelangelo Pistoletto, Reena Kallat, Ding Yi, and Frank Thiel explore themes of sustainability, global connection, and material identity.

This dialogue extends across ZEGNA’s spaces worldwide as part of a broader commitment to art. ZEGNART is ZEGNA’s framework for art and culture. It reflects the brand’s long-standing commitment to art, rooted in the vision of founder Ermenegildo Zegna, and encompasses all of the brand’s artistic initiatives-past, present, and evolving across generations of the Zegna family.
 
Alberto Garutti Dedicato alle persone che sedendosi qui ne parleranno outdoor concrete bench sculpture 2009 at ZEGNA HQ.
Alberto Garutti
DEDICATO ALLE PERSONE CHE SEDENDOSI QUI NE PARLERANNO 
(DEDICATED TO THE PEOPLE WHO, SITTING HERE, WILL SPEAK OF IT)
2009
Concrete bench sculpture.

Created for a project initiated in Trivero in 2000 to support social, cultural and environmental community projects – this work takes the form of a series of cement benches placed across the town. Each bears the portrait of one or two local dogs, identified through a collaboration with primary school children and their families. For Garutti, the dog becomes a way of speaking about care, affection and belonging. More than street furniture, these benches are portraits of a community – and invitations to sit, gather and speak to one another.

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Reena Saini Kallat Untitled Cobweb (knots and crossings) 2013 mixed media artwork at ZEGNA HQ.
Reena Saini Kallat
UNTITLED COBWEB (KNOTS AND CROSSINGS)
2013
Acrylic paint, rubber stamps, metal.

Hundreds of rubber stamps, each displaying a colonial street name erased from Mumbai's map and replaced with a local one, are woven into the form of an elaborate cobweb – a symbol evocative of time . The city's layered history – suppressed, renamed, then reclaimed – holds itself together in something fragile, complex but resistant. This work is an iteration of the large-scale commission first installed on the facade of the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai, made for the Zegna collection.

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Michelangelo Pistoletto Woollen – The Reinstated Apple 2007 mixed media artwork at ZEGNA HQ.
Michelangelo Pistoletto
WOOLLEN – THE REINSTATED APPLE
2007
Polystyrene, wool, aluminium.

An apple crafted in wool stands at the entrance to these headquarters. For Pistoletto, the bitten apple is a universal symbol of nature interrupted by human artifice, and argues that artifice must return to nature to complete the cycle. Wool embodies this logic: the sheep covers the human, regrows its fleece, and begins again. 

His father, Ettore Pistoletto Olivero, was commissioned by Ermenegildo Zegna in 1947 to paint the cycles of wool craftsmanship — works that still welcome visitors in our Lanificio in Trivero. The father documented our craft. The son distils it into a single object, the most loaded of historic symbols.

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Stefano Arienti I Telepati (The Telepathists) 2011 installation artwork at ZEGNA HQ.
Stefano Arienti
I TELEPATI (THE TELEPATHISTS)
2011
Installation of river rocks from Biella region, paint, hardware.

Shaped by time, these large river stones painted with faces are scattered across Trivero — camouflaged into the landscape, watching over the town like ancient guardian figures. But these silent heads carry an invisible charge: each one an element in a free Wi-Fi network Arienti built to provide a service for the community. Stone and internet, the oldest and the newest of materials combined into a single work: a playful network of thinking heads, activated by the citizens of the town.

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Emilio Vavarella L’altra forma delle cose (AAS47692 / Picea abies) 2022 mixed media artwork at ZEGNA HQ.
Emilio Vavarella
L'ALTRA FORMA DELLE COSE (AAS47692 / PICEA ABIES)
2022
Server rack, print and stitching on Bielmonte textiles, LED lights.

Vavarella extracted the DNA of the Norway spruce – a tree planted in thousands by Ermenegildo Zegna from 1929 to transform a bare hillside into the landscape of Oasi Zegna – and translated its genetic sequence using custom-built software into textile.
Reforestation produces genetic uniformity. With every tree sharing an identical code, the forest becomes one vast living copy-paste. His choice to use the Jacquard loom to weave the code was deliberate – it is widely considered the first programmable machine and direct ancestor of the modern computer. Nature's own code, returned to fabric.

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Frank Thiel Untitled (Zegna shot #03 and #06) 2011 photographic artwork at ZEGNA HQ.
Frank Thiel Untitled (Zegna shot #03 and #06) 2011 photographic artwork at ZEGNA HQ.
Frank Thiel
UNTITLED (ZEGNA SHOT #03), 2011
UNTITLED (ZEGNA SHOT #06), 2011
Chromogenic print mounted on plexiglass.

Thiel directed his camera into the interior of the Lanificio, our wool mill in Trivero, discovering within its complex machinery an unexpected world of abstraction and visual rhythm. Through perspective and mirroring, the weaving loom's threads multiply beyond the frame into dense, symmetrical fields of line and colour. These photographs are at once portraits of the beating heart of Zegna and a meditation on pattern, repetition, and the meeting of artisanal craft with technological innovation on which the brand was founded.

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Ding Yi Appearance of cross 2010–2014 mixed media painting at ZEGNA HQ.
Ding Yi
APPEARANCE OF CROSS, 2010-14
APPEARANCE OF CROSS, 2010-15
Tempera and mixed media on canvas.

Ding Yi's practice is founded on a single, repeated gesture: the cross. Layers of vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines meet across the surface, transforming a simple mark into something meditative and vast. A cross is known to represent a precise location, but it is also the symbol of sartorial craftsmanship, iconic to the world of ZEGNA. Here every mark and every stitch serves as evidence of the artist or artisan's hand. 

These works emerged from a visit to our wool mill in Trivero, where the structure of woven fabric offered a natural parallel to Ding Yi's visual language and to ZEGNA's own legacy of craft.

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Dan Graham Pavilion 1996 mixed media maquette at ZEGNA HQ.
Dan Graham
PAVILION
1996
Mixed media maquette.

A structure of glass and mirror: transparent, reflective. Where one stands determines what is seen – the world beyond, or one's own image returned. Graham's Pavilion observes the relationship between subject and object, public and private, interior and exterior.
This work was the inspiration for the full-scale work carried out in the Rhododendron Bowl Valley at Oasi Zegna – a 100 km² natural territory in the Alps of northern Italy and the home of our wool mill. At this scale, it functions both as prototype and an invitation to observe one's environment with a new objectivity.

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Lucy and Jorge Orta Fabulae Romanae 2012 mixed media artwork at ZEGNA HQ.
Lucy and Jorge Orta
FABULAE ROMANAE
2012
Mixed media, ZEGNA fabrics.

Lucy and Jorge Orta have spent three decades making shelters, garments and structures that explore how individuals relate to community, city and environment. Commissioned by Ermenegildo Zegna for the MAXXI Museum in Rome, Fabulae Romanae brings together sculptural Refuge Wear – portable habitats that fuse architecture and clothing – alongside ethereal Spirits, figures who carry the pulse of the city, inspired by poet Mario Petrucci.
The installation is made using Zegna fabrics, chosen for their performance and symbolic resonance with protection and movement – a meeting point between the values of two collaborators united by a shared commitment to ethics and craft.

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