Palazzo Reale in Milan dedicates extensive retrospective exhibition to photographer Mario Dondero

Palazzo Reale in Milan dedicates from June 21 to September 6, 2023 an exhibition to the photographic production of Mario Dondero (Milan, 1928 - Petritoli, 2015), among the protagonists of Italian photography in the second half of the 20th century and a prominent photojournalist on the international scene. Promoted by Comune di Milano - Cultura and produced by Palazzo Reale and Silvana Editoriale in collaboration with the Mario Dondero Archive, the extensive retrospective entitled Mario Dondero. Freedom and Commitment is curated by Raffaella Perna and will be staged in the Appartamento dei Principi.

The exhibition aims to offer a comprehensive look at Dondero’s work, through a selection of images belonging to reportages and photo reports made throughout his long career, from the 1950s to the 1910s. Along with many iconic photographs, several unpublished shots from the author’s archive will be presented in the exhibition, including portraits of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Laura Betti.

Following a dual exhibition criterion, chronological and thematic at the same time, in the ten rooms of the Appartamento dei Principi will unfold a narrative in as many stages, each conceived as a micro-exhibition: from the photographs of his first trips to Portugal in the 1950s to the shots taken in Kabul over the years.

The first room houses a nucleus of photographs with a social slant made in the Iberian Peninsula, starting in the mid-1950s, up to the photograph, taken in Malaga in 2001, featuring a portrait held in the palm of a hand of a young Republican fighter who disappeared in a Franco pit. A selection of fifteen photographs taken in Italy is then presented, depicting internal migration within the country, the literacy process, rural labor, political and union demonstrations, and the activities of fishermen in Chioggia in 1980.

The third room houses a body of images taken in 1968 in Ireland, where Dondero documents various aspects of the country’s social reality, including the activities of Irish Catholic leader Bernadette Devlin during her campaign in support of student rights at Queen’s University. Rooms 4 and 5 host a focus devoted to important figures from the world of entertainment, in Italy and abroad, with portraits of Pier Paolo Pasolini filmed on the set of the film Comizi d’amore, Laura Betti, Carla Fracci, Enzo Jannacci, Giorgio Gaber, Vinicio Capossela, Vittorio Gassman, Eugène Ionesco, Serge Gainsbourg, and Jean Seberg. Next, Room 6 hosts portraits of some of the greatest writers and literary figures of the 20th century: from the Armenian-born American writer William Saroyan, filmed at a typewriter in 1959, to Günter Grass portrayed in Milan in 1962, to the experimental poet Edoardo Sanguineti, to Dacia Maraini and Pier Paolo Pasolini portrayed with his mother Susanna Colussi in their home in Eur, to the famous group photograph of the Nouveau Roman.

The exhibition continues with portraits of some of the most significant painters, sculptors, photographers, art critics, and museum directors immortalized by Dondero, including Francis Bacon, Alexander Calder, Barbara Hepworth, Alberto Giacometti, Palma Bucarelli, Alberto Burri, Fabio Mauri, Elisabetta Catalano, Sergio Lombardo, Mimmo Rotella, Pierre Restany, and Fausto Melotti.

Room 8 brings together a significant nucleus of photographs taken in France, documenting social and political realities: the Gaullist party congresses in the late 1950s, the demonstrations in favor of Mitterrand after the assassination attempt he suffered at the hands of the OAS in 1959, the events of the Sixty-Eight, the Paris Stock Exchange, Deng Xiaoping’s trip to France in 1975, and the recent demonstrations in defense of social rights that took place in Paris in 2011. The penultimate room focuses on reportages taken in Africa, where the photographer returns on several occasions throughout his career: in Algeria during the conflict with Morocco, in Nigeria, in the Ivory Coast, in Senegal. Finally, in the last room, images taken in various parts of the world since 1978: in Brazil where the photographer captures the lives of street children, in Berlin in 1989 in the days before the fall of the wall, in Cuba, in Russia and in Kabul, in prisons and hospitals where Emergency doctors work.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by Silvana Editoriale, edited by Raffaella Perna.

For info you can visit the website of the Royal Palace of Milan.

Image: Mario Dondero, Boys in Belfast (1968)

Palazzo Reale in Milan dedicates extensive retrospective exhibition to photographer Mario Dondero

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