The Estorick Collection Presents Portraits of Major Artists by Italian Photographers

Written by Umberto Napolitano Friday, 17 June 2011 20:40

London.- "United Artists of Italy", an exhibition of portraits of some of the 20th century’s best-known artists by twenty-two leading Italian photographers, will be staged at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, 39a Canonbury Square, London N1, from Wednesday 22nd June to Sunday 4th September.  The exhibition, comprising around 90 photographs of artists including De Chirico, Fontana and Morandi by such photographers as Mario Giacomelli, Mimmo Jodice and Gianni Berengo Gardin, tells the story of the Italian contemporary art scene from the 1960s. The photographs on view concentrate exclusively on the portraits of Italians.

They are by 22 photographers active since the 1960s: Claudio Abate, Aurelio Amendola, Gabriele Basilico, Sandro Becchetti, Gianni Berengo Gardin, Elisabetta Catalano, Giorgio Colombo, Mario Cresci, Mario Dondero, Federico Garolla, Luigi Ghirri, Mario Giacomelli, Gianfranco Gorgoni, Mimmo Jodice, Nanda Lanfranco, Uliano Lucas, Attilio Maranzano, Nino Migliori, Ugo Mulas, Paolo Mussat Sartor, Paolo Pellion and Ferdinando Scianna.

This rich group of photographs has been assembled over many years by Massimo Minini. While Minini’s initial plan was to select only portraits of artists, in time the project broadened and began to embrace portraits of writers such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italo Calvino and Alberto Moravia, as well as a number of foreign artists.  In addition, there are portraits of some of Italy’s most important gallery owners such as Lucio Amelio and Leo Castelli.  These brilliant portraits are by no means conventional ‘studio portraits’ as this exhibition reveals. United Artists of Italy shows a cross-section of Italian photography spanning more than thirty years, revealing the extraordinary skills of the photographers while at the same time paying homage to the great artists who are the subjects.  The photographs present a history of contemporary art and artists not through their art works but through faces, poses and expressions.  The most striking portraits capture the spirit of the times but this is more than just a simple collection of chronological images.  Different facets of the artists’ characters are revealed by different photographers.  For example, Aurelio Amendola’s portrait of De Chirico reveals an elderly, passive and bemused man, while Claudio Abate’s image of Pino Pascali captures the artist in playful mood, engaging with his own work.  At other times, photographers train their lenses on one another – as in Berengo Gardin’s candid study of Ugo Mulas, or Mario Dondero’s intimate portrait of Elisabetta Catalano.


This London showing is the fifth venue in a European tour, the collection having previously been exhibited at the Musée d’Art Moderne, Saint Etienne; Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels; Fondazione Stelline, Milan, and the Biennial of Photography, Amsterdam.

The Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art opened in London in 1998. Its new home - a Grade II listed Georgian building - was restored with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund and contains six galleries, an art library, cafe and bookshop. The Collection is known internationally for its core of Futurist works, as well as figurative art and sculpture dating from 1890 to the 1950s. It features paintings by Futurism's main protagonists: Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Gino Severini, Luigi Russolo and Ardengo Soffici as well as works by Giorgio de Chirico, Amedeo Modigliani, Giorgio Morandi, Mario Sironi and Marino Marini. Eric Estorick (1913-93) was an American sociologist and writer who began to collect works of art when he came to live in England after the Second World War.  Estorick visited Europe in 1946 to complete work on the second biography and it was at this time that he began to buy drawings by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger and Georges Braque. Returning to New York on the Queen Elizabeth, following another visit to Europe in 1947, he met Salome Dessau and by the end of the voyage they were engaged. During their honeymoon in Switzerland Estorick discovered Umberto Boccioni's book Futurist Painting and Sculpture (1914) which marked the beginning of his passion for Italian art. Around this time Estorick became a full-time art dealer and acted as a representative for a number of Hollywood clients in the London auction rooms, including Lauren Bacall, Burt Lancaster and Billy Wilder. In 1960 he founded the Grosvenor Gallery in London. The Tate Gallery requested a long-term loan of key works which lasted from 1966 until 1975, when the Estoricks withdrew their pictures and went to live in Barbados. In 1968 the Italian Republic conferred the title of Cavaliere on Estorick, followed in 1970 by the higher honour of Commendatore for his services in promoting Italian art. In 1979 the Italian government showed interest in purchasing the collection but the family refused this offer, along with others from museums in the United States and Israel. Six months prior to his death Estorick set up the Eric and Salome Estorick Foundation, to which he donated all his Italian works. A Georgian house at 39a Canonbury Square, Islington, was purchased in 1994 and refurbished with a substantial grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to house the collection, art library, café and shop. Visit the collection's website at ... http://www.estorickcollection.com

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