Richard Avedon in Italy: unpublished shots on display in Rome

From March 12 to May 17, 2025, the Gagosian Gallery in Rome is hosting Italian Days, an exhibition dedicated to the shots that Richard Avedon (New York, 1923 - San Antonio, 2004) took in Italy between 1946 and 1948. The exhibition, which brings together more than twenty photographs, includes for the first time the entire Italy series, taken by the artist between Rome, Sicily and Venice. Along with these images, a number of portraits of figures embodying his style and a 1946 series dedicated to Zazi, a Roman street performer, also find space. Avedon first came to Italy in 1946, when the country still bore the wounds of World War II and was largely inaccessible to visitors. Since then, the photographer returned several times, fascinated by the contradictions of an area marked by beauty and devastation.

The contrast between the historical grandeur of Italian cities and the resilience of the people who inhabited them became a central element of his visual research, profoundly influencing his approach to portraiture. In Italian Days, images taken by Avedon on his travels dialogue with famous portraits taken in later years. The absorbed face of Marilyn Monroe in 1957 and the intense expression of Ruby Holden, a pawnshop employee and the protagonist of the series In the American West (1979-84), find anticipation in a portrait taken in Rome in 1947. The melancholy and emotional intensity that characterize Monroe’s famous shot emerge as early as the streets of the Italian capital, while the photographer’s 1963 self-portrait recalls a photograph of a young Sicilian portrayed after the war, whose gaze conveys pride and hope.

The exhibition highlights how, in Avedon’s work, time and place are intertwined, creating visual connections that transcend eras and geographical contexts. The link between the young man in Italy #6, Rome, 1946 and the playwright Samuel Beckett, immortalized in 1979, is evident in the posture and direction of the gaze: both look downward, as if seeking answers in the silence of the street. Similarly, the sense of lightness that characterizes some of the images in Italian Days can be found in the gestures of American model Dorian Leigh on the Champs-Élysées or in Audrey Hepburn’s dance with Fred Astaire on the set of Funny Face. Italy, with its cumbersome past and indomitable spirit, represented a fundamental visual laboratory for Avedon, a place capable of inspiring his gaze and refining his photographic language. The exhibition, curated by Cécile Degos-already responsible for the mounting of Iconic Avedon: A Centennial Celebration of Richard Avedon in Paris in 2024-returns this intense relationship through a path that highlights the dialogue between images, subjects and atmospheres. The opening of Italian Days will be held on March 12, with a press preview from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and a public opening event from 6 to 8 p.m. The event marks a new chapter in the homage to Richard Avedon, in anticipation of the exhibition opening on April 30, 2025 at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris.

Notes on the artist.

Richard Avedon is among the most influential photographers of the 20th century. His works are part of prestigious international museum collections, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as well as the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. His first museum retrospective was held at the Smithsonian Institution itself in 1962, followed by several major institutional exhibitions, such as those at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 1970, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1978 and 2002, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1994. Significant posthumous exhibitions include one hosted in 2007 by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, then traveling to the Fondazione FORMA per la Fotografia in Milan, the Jeu de Paume in Paris, the Gropius Bau in Berlin, the FOAM Photography Museum in Amsterdam, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, with an exhibition run ending in 2010. In 2004 Avedon established the Richard Avedon Foundation, charged with preserving and preserving his photographic archive, negatives, publications and documents related to his career.

Richard Avedon in Italy: unpublished shots on display in Rome

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