The Società per le Belle Arti ed Esposizione Permanente (Fine Arts Society and Permanent Exhibition) has its own private art collection with more than three hundred works including paintings, sculptures and about one hundred drawings and engravings.

Since its establishment in 1886, the collection has grown thanks to the paintings and sculptures it has been awarded during the exhibitions organized by Permanente and also thanks to donations by artists and art collectors.
All along the 19th Century important prizes were awarded in conjunction with contemporary art exhibitions organized by Permanente.
The aim of these prizes was to support and promote artists in a period, in which the art market was not as profitable as it is today.

Among the numerous prizes, particularly noteworthy are "Premio Fornara", "Premio Feltrinelli" and "Premio Bagutta – Orio Vergani per le arti figurative" and, furthermore, the prizes awarded during Biennale di Milano - an exhibition, which, since 1955, has been regularly held at Permanente every second year.
The collection offers an extensive overview of the different forms of art flourished in the last 120 years - especially in Milan and Lombardy - and is constantly increasing thanks to generous donations.
These have supplemented the original core of works by artists representative of styles and themes popular at the end of the 19th Century, such as Grandi, Gola, Alciati, Pellini, Chini and also artists from the Novecento movement, in particular Sironi, Carrà, Casorati, Rosai, De Grada, Bucci and Messina.

The collection includes several works by artists representing the most important art movements of the Fifties and Sixties, with particular attention to Milanese artists, such as Fontana, Milani, Cassinari, Chighine, Turcato and Francese.

One of the most significant art movements in those years was Realismo esistenziale (Existential Realism), well represented in the collection by the work of its main Milanese exponents: Banchieri, Guerreschi, Romagnoni and Vaglieri.

The collection also includes an extensive range of works from the Seventies to recent years, thus offering a wide overview of the most important art tendencies in the second half of the 20th Century. Worth a special mention are: the installation Omaggio all'America Latina (Tribute to Latin America) by Emilio Scanavino and Alik Cavaliere, a remarkable example of interaction between painting and sculpture during the Seventies, Abstractism by Reggiani and Veronesi, Pittura Analitica (Analytic Painting) by Griffa, Olivieri and Vago, different examples of Figurativism from the end of the 20th Century by Ossola, Tadini and Vangi and finally a selection of works by contemporary painters and sculptors, such as Bonalumi, Del Pezzo, Paladino, Ghinzani and Staccioli.

Drawings of Resistance of the donation De Micheli

The drawings exhibited here were now entering a part of the museum's permanent collection.
Having collected these works, often produced with the help and the authenticity of a witness "in live" by some of the protagonists of Italian art during the most tragic period, 1943-45, the last world war, is another confirms that Mario De Micheli has interpreted his role as historian and art critic without ever losing contact with the complex reality of his time.
In 1984 he wrote, during the presentation of his collection: "These drawings were performed during the years of Resistance by the artists who participated.
It is a memorable witness of art and civil commitment, unique in its character, patiently collected to remain a living and eternal memory of those heroic and dramatic days. "