An exhibition in Milan dedicated to Irving Penn, great American photographer

The exhibition Irving Penn, entirely dedicated to the American artist, opens at Cardi Gallery in Milan from September 9 to December 22.For the Milanese public, this is, in particular, the first opportunity in more than 30 years to encounter the complexity of the work of Irving Penn (Plainfield, 1917 - New York, 2009).

The exhibition is spread over two floors of the gallery, embracing not only the fashion photography for which Penn is best known, but emphasizing the artist’s special bond withItaly, a chapter to which the second floor is entirely dedicated. The exhibition, which includes works produced by the artist between the 1940s and the 1990s, covers salient moments in almost the entirety of Penn’s artistic career. The exhibition is curated in collaboration with The Irving Penn Foundation.

Considered one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century, Irving Penn is known for his radical contribution to the modernization of the photographic medium through the creation of a canon materialized through both his commercial and personal works. The son of Russian Jewish migrants, Penn emerged in New York City at a sociopolitically turbulent time. Following studies in painting, in the late 1930s he began working as an artist for the fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar, then headed by his own former teacher, the legendary Alexey Brodovitch, and then moved on to American Vogue in the 1940s. Encouraged by Alexander Liberman, Vogue’s editorial director, Penn focused his professional attention on photography while cultivating a personal art practice. Over the next sixty years, he shot more than 150 covers for Vogue, producing groundbreaking editorials celebrated for their formal simplicity and use of light. Penn’s artistic contributions formed an unprecedented legacy for Vogue; editor Anna Wintour describes how he “fundamentally changed the way people saw the world, and our perception of beauty.” Breaking with convention, Penn used photography as an artist, expanding the creative potential of the medium in an era when the photographic image was seen primarily as a means of communication.

The exhibition brings together key works that situate Penn’s work in the context of various artistic, social and political subjects. The exhibition features some of his most iconic content, taken both in the studio and outdoors. These are shots that range from captivating images of stars to impressions of the natural world, to abandoned garbage in the street, and surreal still lifes, testifying to his constant search for authenticity. The exhibition introduces the artist’s inspiration, derived from garbage and everyday objects, and his ability to bring to light the beauty of environments characterized by a calm, minimalist aesthetic, producing a distilled visual language characterized by a disarming elegance.

For all information, you can visit Cardi Gallery’s official website.

Pictured: Irving Penn, Black and White Vogue Cover (Jean Patchett), New York, 1950. Ph. credit: Condé Nast

An exhibition in Milan dedicated to Irving Penn, great American photographer

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