Milan and fashion in the photographs of Gian Paolo Barbieri, an exhibition at Palazzo Pirelli

From September 17 to 30, 2019, in conjunction with Fashion Week, the Lombardy Regional Council will host a tribute to Lombard photographer Gian Paolo Barbieri (Milan, 1938), famous for his fashion photographs. The exhibition, promoted curated by the Gian Paolo Barbieri Foundation in collaboration with Martina Corgnati and organized by Marta Menegon and Sara Arrigoni, will gather at the Palazzo Pirelli Events Space about 70 photographic works tracing the artist’s creative life, from the early days to the early 2000s.

Milan and Fashion, a Tribute to Gian Paolo Bar bieri (this is the title of the exhibition) is a journey through the life of Gian Paolo Barbieri, which recounts the indissoluble bond with his hometown, Milan, fundamental to his artistic research and creative production. A common thread that theLombardy Region Council Assembly welcomes to the "Pirellone," its headquarters and prestigious icon of Lombard industriousness, emphasizing how Lombardy, a center of thought, invention, creativity and history, is the ideal container for the artist’s production.

It is an itinerary that highlights the relationship entertained by the great artist-photographer with the city of Milan, a place of fundamental importance for his work. Gian Paolo Barbieri’s existence in this city, rich in history, classical theaters and art galleries was deeply marked by Renaissance culture, as well as by modern culture.

A fundamental role in his creative evolution was played by his experience with his father, a textile merchant, who from an early age took him along, allowing him to propose color combinations in his fabric choices. Thus the matter of color, of its infinite combinations, that of fabric, and soon fashion itself, became part of his imagination and became the subject of his work. Barbieri had such a practice of textiles that an understanding of the world of fashion was natural. A world that in Italy, however, was still little explored. In fact, “fashion,” as we understand it today, did not exist in the beginning and Italian magazines recycled photos of lahaute couturescaptured in Paris. Indeed, Gian Paolo Barbieri was surprised when Gustave Zumsteg, owner of Abraham Tessuti, hinted that he considered him cut out and sensitive for fashion photography...hence the questions What is fashion? Where does one start?

“Barbieri chooses Italy,” Martina Corgnati wrote in the catalog of the anthological exhibition held in 2007 at the Palazzo Reale, “sheltered from a world that is perhaps too snobbish, too sophisticated and self-referential to maintain any form of contact with reality. Diana Vreeland, the all-powerful art director of Vogue America, discovered him in the pages of Vogue Italia, wanted to meet him and invited him back to the U.S. several times, with minimums guaranteed for months and months of work. But Gian Paolo Barbieri refuses; he is impressed but not seduced by the leopard-fur-clad rooms, the profusion of blue blood that forms the entourage, the cascades of red roses and stiletto heels. As elaborate as Barbieri’s style is, as artificial, as precious, something of the Lombard boy has remained in him, a certain directness, a quest for perfection that leads him to demand more not of the world but of himself, to continually surpass himself, always meeting new challenges.”

Gian Paolo Barbieri succeeds in becoming an accomplice and companion of those designers whom the advent of made in Italy would transform into protagonists of a new era of costume and fashion. One remembers Valentino, Gianfranco Ferré and Walter Albini, just to name a few. There are works that perfectly describe Barbieri’s desire to keep Italy, and in particular Milan, at the center of attention: one of them is the shot taken for Gianfranco Ferré in 1991 in Piazza Duomo. The very elegant Aly Dunne, immortalized against the background of the Duomo, emerges from the white background surrounded by pigeons.

The project is in collaboration with the gallery representing Gian Paolo Barbieri, 29 Arts in Progress in Milan.

The exhibition will also be open on Sept. 29 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. as part of a special Sunday opening of Palazzo Pirelli.

For all information you can call +39 02 67482.777, send an email to urp@consiglio.regione.lombardia.it or visit the official website of the Regional Council of Lombardy.

Pictured: Gian Paolo Barbieri, Ferrè, Fall - Winter 91-92, Duomo, Milan

Source: release

Milan and fashion in the photographs of Gian Paolo Barbieri, an exhibition at Palazzo Pirelli

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