Turin, CAMERA presents more than 230 masterpieces of modern photography from New York's MoMA

For the first time in Italy, CAMERA - Centro Italiano per la Fotografia presents from March 3 to June 26, 2022 the exhibition Masterpieces of Modern Photography 1900-1940. The Thomas Walther Collection at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, curated by Sarah Hermanson Meister, curator of the Department of Photography at MoMA, New York, and Quentin Bajac, director of the Jeu de Paume in Paris with Jane Pierce, research assistant at the Carl Jacobs Foundation, New York. A selection of more than 230 photographic works from the first half of the 20th century by the great masters of the history of photography will be on display. Like their contemporaries Matisse, Picasso and Duchamp, these photographers were able to revolutionize languages of the plastic arts and took a central role in the development of the early 20th century avant-garde.

A creative ferment that started in Europe and eventually reached the United States, rising to become the world’s leading center of artistic production in the 1940s.

Alongside iconic images by American photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Paul Strand, Walker Evans, or Edward Weston and Europeans such as Karl Blossfeldt, Brassaï, Henri Cartier-Bresson, André Kertész and August Sander, the Thomas Walther collection highlights the central role of women in early modern photography, with works by Berenice Abbott, Marianne Breslauer, Claude Cahun, Lore Feininger, Florence Henri, Irene Hoffmann, Lotte Jocobi, Lee Miller, Tina Modotti, Germaine Krull, Lucia Moholy, Leni Riefenstahl and many others. In addition to masterpieces of photography from the Bauhaus (László Moholy-Nagy, Iwao Yamawaki), Constructivism (El Lissitzky, Aleksandr Rodčenko, Gustav Klutsis), and Surrealism (Man Ray, Maurice Tabard, Raoul Ubac), there are also futurist experiments by Anton Giulio Bragaglia and abstract compositions by Luigi Veronesi.

Within the Walther collection at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, are photographs made as a result of the technical developments of these years, but also numerous linguistic experiments made through various techniques, such as collages, double exposures, cameraless images, and photomontages that tell of a new freedom to understand and use photography.

Collector Thomas Walther collected, between 1977 and 1997, the best photographic works produced during this period, bringing them together in a unique collection that was acquired by MoMA in 2001 and 2017.

The Turin exhibition is a collaboration between the Jeu de Paume in Paris, MASI in Lugano and CAMERA, where it is possible to see these great masterpieces of photography before they return to the United States.

Accompanying the exhibition is a catalog published by Silvana Editoriale in association with the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which includes a critical essay by Sarah Hermanson Meister, brief introductions to the sections of the exhibition and reproductions of works presented.

For info: www.camera.to

Hours: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Thursday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Closed Tuesdays.

Image: Max Burchartz, Lotte (Eye) (1928; New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Thomas Walther Collection. Acquired through the generosity of Peter Norton © Max Burchartz, by SIAE 2021 © 2021 Max Burchartz / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Germany Digital Image © 2021 The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Turin, CAMERA presents more than 230 masterpieces of modern photography from New York's MoMA

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