Peter Hujar's portraits on display at the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato

The Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato presents the exhibition Peter Hujar: Actions and Portraits/Travels in Italy curated by Grace Deveney with Stefano Collicelli Cagol from December 14, 2024 to May 11, 2025. The exhibition is the Italian iteration of the exhibition project curated by Grace Deveney, David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Associate Curator of Photography and Media, of the Art Institute of Chicago, at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2023, reimagined for the spaces of the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art and enriched by a body of 20 photographic images made by Peter Hujar (Trenton, 1934 - Cabrini Medical Center, 1987) during his travels to Italy in the 1950s and 1970s, and a selection of 39 shots dedicated to the protagonists of the emerging performance scene in Lower Manhattan in the 1970s. Peter Hujar: Actions and Portraits/Travels in Italy is part of Toscana al Centro’s annual programming, along with the exhibition Louis Fratino. Satura, through Feb. 2, 2025, and Margherita Manzelli. Le signorine, from Dec. 14, 2024 to May 11, 2025, which opens concurrently. Hujar sought to produce images that constructed a new reality through subtle exchanges between him and his subjects. The artist created enigmatic portraits of people and animals, images of performers, and male nudes, closely attuned to the scene that characterized New York’s East Village in the 1970s, where the language of performance emerged and movement studies took hold. The exhibition includes 59 of Hujar’s shots and, in keeping with the spirit of collaboration and exchange that characterized the New York scene of the 1970s, includes a video by Sheryl Sutton and 3 works by David Wojnarowicz, two of the artists and performers belonging to the American photographer’s circle.

In the early 1970s, Hujar was living in a loft in Lower Manhattan while, nearby, Robert Wilson founded the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds, dedicated to exploring new approaches to theater and choreography. Byrd Hoffman is just one of the companies Hujar would go on to photograph at length, along with the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, founded by Charles Ludlam, and The Cockettes, a psychedelic theater troupe in San Francisco. Hujar photographed the performances of these companies, but he often paid more attention to capturing the actors and dancers backstage, in moments of transition, when they were donning costumes and makeup, preparing to embody the characters they would play. The selection of photographs from Hujar’s Italian travels gathers an unexpected view of the country that was undergoing a sudden transformation, from post-World War II to the economic boom. Hujar was in Italy on several occasions, from the 1950s to the 1970s; during these decades he had the opportunity to visit Florence, Sperlonga, Palermo, Naples, to name a few. During these trips, he observed people, landscape and animals in ways that reflected the complexity of the country. About 20 works provide an overview of Hujar’s understanding of Italian landscapes, animals and humans, a mutual dialogue with what was in front of him that finds correspondence in his approach to subjects related to performance and the theme of portraiture. Exhibition sponsor: Enrico Pecci of Alberto Pecci & C. Thanks to the founding members of the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art.

Notes on the artist

Peter Hujar was a leading figure among the avant-garde artists, musicians, writers and entertainers in the cultural scene of central New York in the 1970s and early 1980s, and commanded enormous respect for his utterly unflinching attitude toward work and life. Hujar possessed an exquisite technique, and his portraits of people and shots of animals and landscapes, with their sought-after black-and-white tones, exerted considerable influence. Extremely moving, though devoid of excess, Hujar’s photographs are always enchanting, though they rarely display conventional beauty. Hujar’s photographs have been exhibited throughout Europe and the United States, in such prestigious venues as the Art Institute of Chicago, the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (New York), the Fotomuseum Winterthur (Switzerland), Kunsthalle Basel (Basel, Switzerland) and the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) for a retrospective in 1994. The Speed of Life exhibition, presented and organized by the Morgan Library & Museum in New York and Fundación MAPFRE in Madrid, kicked off in 2017 and ends in 2019 in Paris at the Jeu de Paume museum. Hujar’s work is in the permanent collections of several institutions, such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Canada (Ontario), the Tate (London), and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid).

Peter Hujar's portraits on display at the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato

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