Silvana – serie

Brassaï is one of the most famous photographers in history. In the early 1930s, he sets out with his camera on long nocturnal walks through Paris. The depictions of people and environments that emerge when darkness descends over the city become his breakthrough. Through more than two hundred vintage photographic prints, this volume - published on the occasion of a major retrospective hosted in Stockholm - presents an in-depth and original window into Brassaï’s oeuvre. Brassaï (1899–1984) was born in Hungary, but France, and especially Paris, became his home. Here he begins a new era in photography with his penetrating images of the city. But Brassaï travelled all over Europe – including to Italy and Spain – as well as to the United States, creating a photographic trail that bears the imprint of his curiosity and his style.The full chronological range of his production is unveiled here, from his first shots influenced by an affinity with the Surrealist movement to his iconic images of Parisian pleasure-seekers and socialites. Particular attention is given to his images of 'graffiti', captured by Brassaï during his decades-long exploration of the walls of Paris, a mark of his bond with the visual arts and artists such as Jean Dubuffet. Finally, the photographs dedicated to the female nude and to fashion, portraits of artist friends and children, and the small paradoxes and “involuntary sculptures” that reality offered to his gaze and which Brassaï, a creator of images, masterfully grasped in the immediacy of the moment.Text in Swedish.

"... Full-page illustrations, drawings, paintings, photos, film scenes accompanied by texts allow the reader to forget reality for a moment. Dreams replace reality." — Mensch Maus… !The volume accompanies the major exhibition - the first in Italy - that the National Cinema Museum dedicates to Tim Burton (1958). A journey into the visionary universe and creativity of the Californian director through original works of art, photographs, film material - storyboards, costumes, sketches, maquettes - and precious documents, many of which come from his personal archive.The volume retraces Tim Burton’s 30-year production from his beginnings, with Beetlejuice and Batman, up to the recent great success of Wednesday, highlighting the evolution of his singular imagination, which draws not only from the most varied forms of popular culture - such as fairy tales, comics, television films - but also to classic illustrators such as Edward Gorey, Charles Addams, Don Martin and Theodore Geisel, to expressionist cinema, to the horror catalogue of Universal Studios and the masters of suspense William Castle and Vincent Price.Likewise, it emerges how ideas, themes and even some images peculiar to his art have flowed into the most iconic films that we today associate with the sumptuous cinema spectacle.Text in English and Italian.

Giacomelli's landscape is both real and invented, just as his eye is both visionary and visual. It is a pretext to represent another situation. His landscapes are 'written landscapes' in which the horizon is almost completely eliminated: a fusion of time and non-time. In his landscapes, the relationship between countryside and memory, between Giacomelli and a denied and accepted mother earth, is more dramatic, resulting in a dry and great representation. He captured the marks, material and furrows of the earth and in them he found parallels with human bodies, since the earth, in his poetics, is the flesh of man. Text in English and Italian.

Paul Guiragossian (1926-1993) is one of the most influential artists to emerge from the Arab World in the 20th century. Born to Armenian parents, survivors of the Armenian Genocide, he experienced the consequences of exile, first as a child, and later on as a young refugee from Jerusalem arriving to Beirut in the late 1940s.In the '50s Paul started teaching art in several Armenian schools and worked as an illustrator. He later started his own business with his brother Antoine painting cinema banners, posters, and drawing illustrations for books. Soon after he was discovered for his art and introduced to his contemporaries after which he began exhibiting his works in Beirut and eventually all over the world.

Arman 1975–2005, edited by Chiara Spangaro and produced by Studio Celant in collaboration with the Arman Archives, New York, is devoted to the artist’s creative journey and production of the last 30 years of his life.The volume, which continues and completes the earlier monograph Arman 1954–1974 edited by Germano Celant (2020), presents the professional biography and oeuvre of the French-American artist through original research that addresses in detail the evolution of his practice and investigates his constant exploration in the many series he conceived, including New Accumulations, Shooting Colors, Dirty Painting, Atlantis, Accumulations de collections, Emersions, and Sandwich Combos, just to mention a few.In addition to the editor’s introductory essay, the volume is further enriched by a series of studies by Cécile Debray, Rose­mary O’Neill and Jérôme Sans. The authors draw on contemporary critical discourse to investigate key aspects of Arman’s work, including his performances, his global outreach, the development of his monumental projects, and his influence on subsequent generations.These essays are followed by an extensive illustrated chronology of Arman’s professional and personal life that highlights the outstanding events, exhibitions, and works in the last 30 years of his artistic endeavours. Particular emphasis is placed on the many critical accolades he has received, interwoven with accounts of the historic and artistic context of the time. The volume is completed by a full scholarly apparatus.

This book is published on the occasion of an exhibition in Milan, which was first shown in Murcia (Spain) and after in Siena (September 2009 - January 2010), featuring a selection of 114 pictures, some of which are previoiusly unpublished, almost all of small size, by the famous American photographer Francesca Woodman. Born in Denver in 1958, daughter of the ceramist Betty and the painter George Woodman, Francesca started to work with the camera when she was only thirteen, by making her first self-portrait. In the nine following years, before her suicide in January 1981 when she was only twenty-three, she kept on taking pictures of herself at home, in the midst of nature, on her own or with friends, while in action shots or in studied poses. With texts by Isabel Tejeda, Marco Pierini and Lorenzo Fusi, a biography of the artist and a complete bibliography, this book is the most recent and most complete publication of the artist's work. Text in English and Italian.

What do we see when we observe? What do we see when we observe a photograph? Ghirri's work is distinguished by the tension between the object and its representation, and there is nothing that he loves more than those situations in which boundaries become permeable; his work has taught us a new way of seeing, giving meaning to what is seemingly obvious. This is not the landscape that is normally perceived, but the one that is supposed to be latent, inscribed on the reverse: landscape of memory and fairytale, the landscape of hidden figures and wonders. In this direction, Ghirri has always preferred common and familiar places, already seen, but for the first time 'observed' with different eyes, where everything is suspended between past and future and where, like in the countryside, the world can be imagined as a vision which still arouses wonder. A thought-landscape. Text in English and Italian.

The dramatic events of the troubled life of Caravaggio, one of the most formidable painters in the history of art of all time, are retraced in this volume, updated in light of the latest discoveries, and published on the occasion of the 450th anniversary of his documented birth in Milan in 1571. Examined here are the most significant circumstances that shattered, in just 14 years, the brief course of the great Lombard genius’ professional life: from his arrival in Rome in 1596 to his tragic and still mysterious death in Porto Ercole in 1610. A compelling story that exerts an irresistible attraction, perhaps equal to that emanating from the artist’s masterpieces, in which his innermost essence shines through.His exceptional works, characterised by ingenious intuitions and a revolutionary way of painting, are here rigorously analysed, for the first time on a large scale, not only from a historical and stylistic point of view but also from a technical- executive one. A methodology that in recent years has become one of the essential components for a full understanding of the Caravaggio phenomenon. It is for this reason that the historical-artistic files of the autograph works are flanked by specific technical-diagnostic notes that complete and integrate the reading of his extraordinary paintings.

The volume offers a chance to approach the work of Brassaï (1899-1984), a multifaceted figure in the history of French photography.A painter, sculptor and writer in addition to being a photographer, his name is inextricably linked to the masterpiece Paris de Nuit, published in 1933 with a preface by Paul Morand. Brassaï’s views of the capital – illuminated by public lighting and other sources, and at times shrouded in fog – lend a mysterious aura to the urban landscape. Brassaï was a forerunner in capturing the night-time atmosphere of different areas of Paris, masterfully blending photographic art with his personal sensitivity.The volume, curated by the photographer’s nephew Philippe Ribeyrolles, sets out to revive Brassaï’s body of work, offering an overview of his evolution over the years. From the artist’s collaboration with Edward Steichen to international recognition in the wake of his 1957 exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, Brassaï’s influence spreads far beyond the French borders.The volume includes texts by Philippe Ribeyrolles, Silvia Paoli, an interview with Gilbert Brassaï, the artist’s wife, and biographical information.Text in English and French.

The success of Christian Dior's first essence, Miss Dior, was so outstanding as to leave its permanent mark in history. Ten years on from the founding of his perfume factory, on 24 October 1957, Christian Dior's untimely death conferred a new dimension to a decade characterised by an uncommon destiny.Text in English and French.

The Venus of Arles, drawing on Praxiteles’ art, is one of the most striking depictions of Aphrodite, goddess of desire, beauty, and vital energy.Discovered in Arles in 1651, gifted to Louis XIV, installed at Versailles, and now considered a major work at the Louvre, her absence from Provence has enhanced her prestige and created the myth of “the great pagan” celebrated by the Félibres.Its loan to the Musée départemental Arles antique, accompanied by numerous masterpieces, offers an opportunity to explore the Empire of Venus in all its breadth: a dazzling apparition born of sea foam, an erotic and cosmic force, goddess of adornments, an ardent figure, then a fertile one, finally a myth contested and reinvented by today’s writers, historians, and artists.This book on the Venus of Arles, featuring numerous illustrations, scholarly essays, thematic analyses, and historical documents, unveils the multiple identities of the Arlesian statue.Aphrodite emerges as an active force, admired and feared, a figure still alive, still capable of bewitching our present.

Reflections on the landscape are the fulcrum of Franco Fontana's poetic imagery, whose work has always been aimed at revealing the mystery of the invisible that is hidden within the visible.Photography is the tool Franco Fontana uses to capture the inexistent of what is real - always hanging in the balance between representation of reality and so-called reality.Fontana's work, therefore, represents an analysis of seeing, meant as an imaginative and cognitive activity: his intentions are not restricted to documenting the appearance of the places and people he captures, nor to the idea of image exclusively as an aesthetic object. On the contrary, he proposes some food for thought that (while taking reality into account) also contemplates the re-evaluation of perception through photography.Text in English and Italian.

Enzo Mari was an inventor of languages, a constructor of grammars - intended as methods or sets of rules -, deeming these instruments necessary to “communicate knowledge with improved quality and efficiency”.It is impossible to define his discipline or his profession: he is an artist, an industrial designer, a graphic designer, an architect, but also a theorist, a pedagogue, an intellectual, possibly a philosopher, certainly a utopian who knew how to programme quiet revolutions which are, even today, often misunderstood when not totally unknown; these are some of the many facets of a complex and revolutionary personality.The root of his design methodology, which characterises the process of all the studies he later conducted, originates in his initial research into the field of visual arts, i.e. the research into the perceptual ambiguity of three-dimensional space that he undertook in the early 1950s, when he was still a scenography student at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts.What characterises Mari’s design process is a “scientific” method made up of codes, theorems, theses, the construction of tools and instruments, tests, the comparison of models and the transcription of results deriving from his observations.This volume intend to return to the public a mnemonic atlas, a mapping system that can be used to explore and understand the complex nuances of the research conducted by Mari. Semantic research and verifications that have resulted in the programming of art, and which constitute the basis of the method that defines a process common to all the research, disciplines and utopias he pursued.Text in English and Italian.

Aldo Rossi (1931-1997) added to his successful activity as architect, professor and theorist, also that - equally well known - of designer: in this field he continued with great professionalism and passion until his untimely death in 1997, collaborating with some of the most important Italian and international manufacturers, such as Alessi, Artemide, Bruno Longoni Atelier d’Arredo, Molteni, Rosenthal and Unifor.The volume investigates Aldo Rossi’s activity in the design sector in its entirety, presenting the furnishings and objects designed and manufactured from 1960 to 1997.Among these, some pieces well known to the public stand out, such as the La Conica and La Cupola coffee makers by Alessi, the Cabina dell’Elba by Bruno Longoni Atelier d’Arredo or the Paris chair by Unifor, just to name a few.The analysis of this production, which also includes unpublished projects and prototypes, highlights the continuous and constant relationship with architecture, while the technical drawings and photographic and archival documentation help to restore the history of each piece.The volume includes a critical essay by Domitilla Dardi.Text in English and Italian.

The book tells the story of Arredoluce. The company produced lamps and furnishing accessories which, in the post-war industrial boom, helped to write the history of Made in Italy .Arredoluce was born in 1943 in Monza, and was heavily influenced by the entrepreneur and designer Angelo Lelii. Arredoluce's curiosity for innovations from abroad, combined with a love for traditional materials - above all, glass - and a maniacal attention to detail marked the production line of the company, producing modern and sought-after specimens.Arredoluce is best remembered for his numerous participations at the Triennale di Milano, his quotes on Domus, and collaborations with designers such as Gio Ponti and Ettore Sottsass Jr. He also enjoyed great success abroad, with orders from luxury hotels the world over. The company, however, underwent generational changes, and this combined with the new economic scenarios, led to its closure in the 1990s. This volume offers an important contribution to perpetuating the name of this glorious company, and ensuring it has its rightful place in the history of Italian industry.Text in English and Italian.

A multidisciplinary artist, Shirin Neshat (1957, Qazvin) works with photography, video, film and theatre, creating highly lyrical narratives and politically loaded visions that question the themes of power, religion, race and the relationship between past and present, east and west, individual and collective.The volume, on the occasion of the first major solo exhibition in Italy dedicated to Neshat at PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, spans the artist’s more than 30-year career, with almost 200 photographs and ten video installations, collected by the world’s most important museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA, the Guggenheim, New York and Tate Modern.Neshat interprets the history and present of her birth country, Iran, and indeed the whole world from the female perspective: from her debut in the 1990s with the Women of Allah series, comprising photographs of women whose bodies are inscribed with poetic calligraphy, to The Fury, a video installation that anticipates the Woman, Life, Freedom movement.Neshat’s work, however, goes beyond the theme of gender and uses male/female dualism as a starting point for exploring the tension between belonging and exile, sanity and insanity, dream and reality.Text in English and Italian.

The works of Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) and Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), two notable authors of 20th century art, are compared for the first time in a project aimed at illustrating their points of tangency, the result of a shared sentiment whose ultimate aspiration is the search for the absolute.The volume therefore presents the ideal encounter and the powerful dialogue between these two figures, so distant in attitudes and in life, but equally linked by a reflection on the truth in art, which blossomed against the background of an era afflicted by questions about man and its role in the universe.Both have worked on matter by removing its encumbrance and opacity, poised between the primordial dimension of time and the cosmological dimension of space, animated by the same magnificent obsession, that for the invisible that is inside and outside of us, in the flesh and in the cosmos, in cells and stars.Texts by: Sergio Risaliti, Chiara Gatti, Paolo Campione, Alessandro Del Puppo, Serenella Todesco, Marco Senaldi, Cristina Beltrami, Marco Fagioli.

00s is the first exhibition that explores the 2000s, taking as its starting point one of the most important European collections of contemporary art – the Cranford Collection. This accompanying catalogue selects 100 works from the collection, and includes pieces by artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman, Damien Hirst, Gerhard Richter, Raymond Pettibon, and Josh Smith. With an introduction by Nicolas Bourriaud, the CEO of MO.CO, and interviews with Muriel and Freddy Salem, the Patrons of the Cranford Collection. Text in English and French.

The beach has long been a compelling subject in photography, serving as the perfect stage for the grand 'human comedy.' Under the vast, indifferent sky, people come and go like actors in an endless play. The ocean, timeless and indifferent, mirrors the comedy and tragedy of human existence.The book presents a selection of photographers who have explored the beach from many perspectives: Ferdinando Scianna, Bruno Barbey, Bruce Gilden, Harry Gruyaert, Martin Parr, Trent Parke, Olivia Arthur and Newsha Tavakolian. Throughout history, Magnum photographers have captured the beach in strikingly different ways, reflecting both cultural moments and timeless human experiences. Whether in colour or black and white, whether depicting joy, solitude, or the sublime power of nature, beach photography continues to be a rich and evocative theme, inviting viewers to see the shore as more than just a destination, but as a canvas for visual expression.Text in English and Italian.

This volume retraces the work of Elliott Erwitt through 136 black & white photographs he has personally selected. His is a sharp and original gaze capable of gently bringing out the humorous, unusual or even ridiculous side of certain aspects of life, especially through street snapshots: "It is a matter of reacting to what you see, without preconceptions; you can find subjects to photograph everywhere, all it takes is simply to notice things, take an interest in what surrounds us, and be concerned with people."Text in English, Italian and French.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of independence for seventeen African countries, the Museum for Fine Arts in Brussels in partnership with the Royal Museum of Central Africa presents during Summer 2010 the festival L'AFRIQUE VISIONNAIRE (VISIONARY AFRICA). This catalogue is published to accompany an exhibition celebrating fifty years of African photography, illustrating how collective identities of postcolonial Africa were built. Panafricanism has become something concrete in the exchange between artists, above all in connection with the elaboration of common aesthetic and research. Photography, in the process of emancipation and the writing of an endogenous history, is undoubtedly the best support: African photographers' innovative role will therefore be highlighted in the process of understanding generational and social changes. The catalogue will include an introduction by Simon Njami and a text by Jean-Loup Pivin.

Featuring over 100 black-and-white photographs, this collection of Bischof's images conveys his sense of empathy and humanity.Text in English, Italian and French.

This book coincides with a related exhibition presented at Palazzo Madama, Museo Civico d'Arte Antica, Turin, but does not specifically document the show. Throughout her long career, Eve Arnold photographed celebrities and Hollywood stars at the height of glamour - such as Marilyn Monroe (a close friend of Arnold's), Joan Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlene Dietrich - as well as the poor and dispossessed. Her work was sought out by presidents, royalty and political activists: Malcolm X personally asked Eve Arnold to document his fight against racism. For her international work, which took her from Afghanistan to Mongolia and was often commissioned by leading magazines, she received numerous honours and awards, culminating in her election as Master Photographer, the world's most prestigious photographic honour. Eve Arnold includes a biography of the artist, a foreword by Angela Madesani and text by Arnold's close friend Simonetta Agnello Hornby.  Text in English, Italian and French.

The graphics range from the advertising produced for the first steam ships of the 1880s to those for the ocean liners of the 1920s, cruise liners of the 1930s and, finally, those for the last transatlantic lines in the 1960s. Posters: The Sea Voyage collects placards, posters, announcements, advertising leaflets, brochures and pamphlets produced to promote passenger ships, cruises, sea journeys and Atlantic crossings. In addition to identifying these graphics, text by architect and scholar Pablo Piccione contextualises and historicises the development of Italian graphic styles and tastes. Text in English and Italian.

For leading magazines like Life and Regards, David Seymour covered the most significant events of his time: the Spanish Civil War; the places and faces of a Europe ravaged by the Second World War; the hopes placed in the new State of Israel. He also documented a post-war Italy filled with contradictions: the rising stars of the Cinecittà Studios, the Vatican palaces and Venice, along with religious processions and the small rural schools scattered through the South. This volume traces the career of this extraordinary photographer through over 120 shots in black and white. A man who honestly captured the spirit of his time, backed by a strong social conscience, and always determined to be in the middle of the action.Text in English, Italian and French.

The elusive oeuvre of the German photographer Herbert List is hard to categorise. He worked in almost every genre that photography has to offer: architecture, still life, street-photography, portraiture, documentation and cataloguing. Yet he also blurred the demarcation between those fields: architectural shots seem like composed still lifes or surreal compositions, documentation of the Greek sculpture or African artefacts borders on portraiture, and when capturing the classical beauty of the male physique, one does not quite know if we look at painstakingly composed arrangements or a private photo-diary, shot spontaneously. With this book we invite the reader to discover List's multifaceted work, by exploring many masterpieces and some lesser known work side by side. The result is a visual journey leading from enigmatic night shots, surreal and dark compositions, to the Mediterranean sunlight on the bodies of young men and the ruins of ancient Greece. Text in English, Italian and French.

Tina Modotti was at the centre of key events of the early 20th Century: the cultural ferment of the Mexican renaissance, the Cuban revolution and the heroic period of the Communist International, during which her political commitment was expressed through bold, daring actions. The book paints a vivid multifaceted portrait of this extraordinary woman and includes around a hundred photographs in which her quest for formal perfection is combined with her talent for resolutely and passionately capturing the pulse of life. Text in English, Italian and French.

The first previously unpublished series of photographs - Residents of New York - was produced in the artist's hometown in 2014 and the second - Denizens of Brussels - in March 2015 in close cooperation with the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts during preparations for Serrano's retrospective in Brussels, when he walked the streets of the capital for ten nights to encounter the most marginal of its inhabitants. With his unique vision, making no judgements and conveying no political message (a point he insists on), he presents men and women generally invisible to passersby, forcing us by the sheer power of his photographs to see these urban residents. The text is by Michel Draguet, and Andres Serrano himself talks about his approach, the two series and the specific qualities of each. Text in English, French and Dutch.

Today, the relationship between art and politics is more crucial than ever, and the volume Crusades and Other Stories is significant for its production of knowledge, new perspectives, and reflection through shared sensibilities about our contemporary time of unrest and uncertainty.Wael Shawky works with an original visual language in video, drawing, and performance that draws on histories of oral storytelling and recreation. In so doing, Shawky opens a foundational debate that explores the construction of history universally to look at how narratives of the past are controlled and rewritten in order to define present and future understandings of the world.Adopting a vocabulary of theatre and cinema, and mixing forms of aesthetics and production, Wael Shawky's films are performances of the reconstruction of well-known and sometimes disputed tales, myths, and legends that interrogate human histories as creative spectacle. Child actors in the series Al Araba Al Madfuna and hand-crafted marionettes in the Cabaret Crusades trilogy intentionally exaggerate the meaning of the roles they play in a statement on the theatricality of existence.Text in English and Arabic.